ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the power of leisure in processes of co-creative, communal stimulation of well-being effects, that is the effectiveness of leisure at the systemic level, group level, or societal level. In some developed Western economies, there are certain trends which make a leisure-based approach to well-being very challenging, but also potentially beneficial. The dynamic and reorganisational capacity is the key feature. Social innovation is about opening up processes to collective creativity – to bottom-up and intrinsic problem-solving instead of top-down solution enforcing. The chapter also focuses on the conceptual foundations of how the behaviour of people can be influenced by using elements/tools that are common in leisure, or by using leisure events and activities outright as interventions in social systems. Warner makes an explicit connection to leisure in another well-being/health-related context, that is as part of an analysis of what kinds of strategies help with successful aging for older people who are returning home after hospitalization.
