MCYS Funding Success: Play and the Environment – Games Imagining the Future

Chloe and Paul - Play and the Environment

The aim of this project is to examine how board games can support young people’s understanding of, and action on, the climate crisis. The project contends that the climate crisis is a social problem and an imaginative challenge, especially for young people whose futures are most affected by it. This project thus includes a consideration of board games as a tool for climate education, but also self-consciously investigates them as a means for young people (aged 16-19) to explore and communicate their ideas about climate change, social transformation and the future. In this project, young gamers are co-actors in an exchange of knowledge between games, game designers, academics and young people themselves.

The project poses the following research questions:

1. How can board games support young people’s understanding of the climate crisis?

2. How can board games support young people in communicating their ideas about the climate crisis?

3. How can young people’s ideas and expertise about climate change help improve board game design on these themes?

This project identifies young people (aged 16-19) as a cohort of players with a particular stake in climate change-related games. The international Fridays for Future climate strikes represent a watershed moment in environmentalism because of the grassroots, radical action being taken by young people. Far from being in need of education about the climate crisis, young people require support from their adult allies in communicating what they know and think about the climate. Bowman and Germaine’s other work with young people suggests a step change is needed in the way in which educators respond to young people, radically including young people themselves in the category of educators. We consider the ways in which young people collaborate in the climate strikes both as educators and learners. Crucially, such action taken by young people not only aims at awareness-raising of the science of climate change, and of the groups’ political demands, but is also an invitation for us to take part in an imaginative conversation about what the future could look like.

Following this work, this new project works with young people and games, applying their perspectives in the development of a framework for evaluation that will identify how to make better games, or facilitate the better use of games, as agents of social change during a time of climate crisis.

The project will begin in September 2021 and run for 12 months. If you want to know more, or would like to get involved, please email c.germaine.buckley@mmu.ac.uk