London’s newest playable neighbourhood, Wembley Park, is launching a unique, interactive digital PlayDays event concept across several dates this August. Starting Saturday 5th August, the first PlayDays: Creatures of Wembley Park event will turn the North West London neighbourhood into an interactive video game console where children of all ages can use everyday objects to make the urban landscape playable.

The event has been curated by Walt, a new studio led by Iain Simons, founder and creative director of northern England’s acclaimed GameCity Interactive Entertainment Festival and co-founder of the National Videogame Arcade in Nottingham, together with Wembley Park.

Visitors will be invited to take control of custom joysticks, jumbo buttons, and even a programmable banana to play a series of short games on two 9m tall, 360° wraparound digital screens on Olympic Way, directly opposite the iconic Wembley Stadium.

One of the giant digital screens transformed into a video games console at Wembley Park
Image credit: Chris Winter / Wembley Park

Visitors will have the opportunity to spot and collect digital ‘creatures’ by playing a series of short games. Players will complete mazes to help the creatures find their friends, enjoy balance challenges, practice their speed-count skills, complete colour memory challenges and more. For the very youngest participants, there will be creatures that just want to play, with players able to tickle them and make them jump around. Each game will last for 90 seconds.

The creatures will first appear on Saturday 5th August, between 11 am and 6 pm, then again at further digital PlayDays events on 16th and 17th August. PlayDays hosts will be on hand to assist players, ensuring that everyone has the chance to participate. All PlayDays games will be free for everyone to enjoy.
PlayDays builds on Wembley Park’s reputation as an open-air canvas for interactive and immersive art. Since 2018, the neighbourhood has hosted immersive seasonal installations and experiences and a series of fascinating digital artworks as part of its free public art trail. There are artworks that visitors can walk upon, such as acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist Claire Luxton’s current Messenger installation on the Spanish Steps connecting the national stadium with the OVO Arena, Wembley, and art that participants can lose themselves in, such as the virtual reality offering at meetspaceVR within BOXPARK Wembley. Visitors can also dance with their digital ‘shadow’ as they traverse the Royal Route Underpass, thanks to Jason Bruges Studio’s innovative Shadow Wall digital installation – a site-specific monochromatic, interactive media artwork focused where the shadows and silhouettes of the crowds passing through the space generate the resultant artwork. The Jason Bruges team has also installed the Royal Wave at Wembley Park – a scaled, and bespoke lenticular wave generated from portraits of local people and the observer’s movement in relation to it.

Art also plays a key part in Wembley Park’s family-friendly Summer of Play programme, which features 300+ hours of inspirational and interactive free events, from messy arts and crafts workshops to alien dance-offs, circus skills and dance classes for participants of all ages and abilities.