“Kidulting” and the rise of adult recess in corporate events

Remember making friends at recess? No networking strategy; just a simple game, you joining in, and a few high fives later, you’ve made connections. Sounds like something most corporate events could use more of.

Nowadays, we’ve made meeting people considerably more complicated. Networking sessions, apps and carefully facilitated icebreakers all aim to manufacture connections that once happened pretty naturally.

Luckily, a growing trend known as “kidulting” is bringing some of that playfulness back into adult life. And for corporate events, it could offer a surprisingly useful way to get people interacting again.

First, what is kidulting?

Kidulting is exactly what it sounds like: adults embracing activities, hobbies and experiences traditionally associated with children. Think Lego sets, arcade games, crafts, collectables and the renewed enthusiasm for activities many of us supposedly grew out of years ago.

While nostalgia can be part of the appeal, kidulting isn’t necessarily about trying to recreate childhood. There’s also something satisfying about activities that are physical, familiar and simply enjoyable. Not everything adults do needs to involve a screen, a productivity goal or an impressive answer when someone asks about it.

And what is adult recess?

Adult recess takes that appetite for play and makes it social. Rather than playing alone, people are given the space and opportunity to play together, whether that’s through giant games, table tennis, building activities, drawing, arcade games or something more active.

The idea has increasingly found its way into events, where play can sit alongside networking, conference breaks and social activities. The games themselves aren’t really the point. What matters is what happens around them: people gather, participate, compete, laugh and start talking.

Why is adult recess turning up at corporate events?

Corporate events have spent years trying to solve the same problem: how do you get a room full of people who don’t necessarily know each other to interact naturally?

Traditional networking often puts conversation first. Walk up to someone, introduce yourself and find something to discuss. Adult recess reverses that order. Give two people something to do together and the conversation has somewhere to start.

In other words, we were networking before we knew what networking was. The playground just had considerably fewer name badges.

Play gives people an easy way in

Familiarity is one of adult recess’s biggest advantages. Most people can look at a Jenga tower, ping-pong table or pile of Lego and understand roughly what’s expected of them.

That makes participation relatively low-pressure. Attendees can watch, join in or wander over when something catches their attention. There’s no complicated introduction required and, ideally, no lengthy briefing. If your icebreaker needs a whole presentation to explain the rules, the ice has arguably won.

It gives us something tangible again

Much of the modern working day happens through screens. We type, scroll, present and meet through them, then arrive at corporate events where technology often remains central to the experience.

Adult recess introduces something deliberately physical. Building, drawing, playing and competing gives people a shared focus away from the screen. It isn’t anti-tech. It’s simply a different kind of participation, and one that can be particularly welcome between presentations, meetings and more structured parts of the agenda.

Adult recess isn’t adult PE

There is one fairly obvious danger here. The moment play becomes compulsory, heavily facilitated or tied to an elaborate team-building objective, some of its appeal disappears.

Adult recess works because participation can remain informal. People can join an activity, watch from the sidelines or move on. The aim isn’t to make everyone play. It’s to create more opportunities for interaction to happen naturally.

Recess worked partly because nobody announced that spontaneous friendship would commence at 2:15pm.

Organic introductions

Perhaps the most interesting application for corporate events is networking. Put two strangers opposite each other at a cocktail table and somebody has to make the first move. Put a game between them and the interaction has already started.

Instead of opening with “So, what do you do?”, the first exchange might be about the game, the challenge or whether somebody is bending the rules in the activities. Once that initial barrier is gone, the professional conversation can follow naturally.

For event planners, the rise of adult recess offers another way to think about networking and social spaces. Lawns, courtyards, terraces and flexible breakout areas can become more than somewhere to send attendees between sessions. They can give people room to interact in a completely different way.

Kidulting might sound playful, but the idea behind adult recess is useful: sometimes people connect more easily when they’re doing something together. So perhaps the next networking brief doesn’t need another elaborate icebreaker, but just somewhere people can actually play.

Venue Crew can help you find a corporate venue with the space to support every part of your event, including the parts where people take off the name badges and actually get to know each other.