What We Believe
Communities are not waiting to be fixed. They're waiting to be invited.
The Calling
We believe humanity flourishes when people choose to live for one another.
Not simply alongside one another, but with a genuine sense of care and responsibility for the people, places, and communities we share.
We believe this choice changes what becomes possible—how we relate, how we lead, how we solve problems, and how we imagine the future together.
PLAYCE exists to help make that choice more natural, more visible, and more possible in the world.
Purpose
Why do we exist?
PLAYCE exists to help create a world where people choose to live for one another.
We believe the greatest challenges facing our communities are not primarily problems of design, policy, or infrastructure. They are problems of relationship.
When people genuinely care for one another and share responsibility for the places they inhabit, communities become stronger, organizations become healthier, and the systems we depend on begin to heal.
Our work is to create the conditions where that choice becomes possible.
Everything else we do—community engagement, education, facilitation, research, practitioner development, and design—is in service of that larger purpose.
Belief
What we believe shapes what we make possible.
People hold extraordinary possibility.
We believe in people's capacity for generosity, creativity, wisdom, and contribution—and in creating the conditions for those qualities to emerge.
The future is something we create with one another.
When people have genuine authorship in what comes next, participation becomes ownership, and ownership becomes stewardship.
How we gather changes what becomes possible.
The questions we ask, the spaces we create, and the experiences we design shape what people can imagine and accomplish together.
We flourish when we choose to live for one another.
When we recognize our responsibility to one another and the places we share, possibilities emerge that none of us could create alone.
Promise
What changes because of our work?
People stop asking, “How do we get people to participate?” and begin asking, “How do we create the conditions for people to contribute?”
Contribution creates ownership.
Ownership creates shared responsibility.
Communities become collaborators.
Organizations become places of belonging.
And people discover that the wisdom, creativity, and capacity to shape what comes next were already there.
The work no longer belongs to PLAYCE. It belongs to everyone.
Meet the team
The practice has people behind it. Come meet us: office hours are open to anyone curious about the work.
Joy Kuebler, PLA, FASLA
Founder & CEO
Joy has always believed there is more wisdom, creativity, and possibility within communities than traditional engagement allows us to see. As a landscape architect, she began experimenting with a different way of bringing people into the design process—one built around play, connection, and genuine authorship. What began as a better way to engage became PLAYCE: a methodology for creating the conditions where people can imagine and shape what comes next, together.
LinkedIn
Cheryl Salazar, MPA, CPRP
Managing Partner
After nearly 20 years in municipal parks and recreation, Cheryl knows what can happen when public service becomes deeply human. Her career has been spent bringing people together, strengthening communities, and creating places where people feel they belong. When she discovered PLAYCE, she recognized a way of working that reflected what she already knew to be true: people want to contribute, and when we create the right conditions, they will surprise us with what they make possible.
LinkedInOffice hours
Bring us your questions
Every conversation starts somewhere. Join us at PLAYCE office hours and ask anything about the practice.