Playing with the trouble: a travelling library for transformative play
A critical challenge for addressing urgent broad societal issues is to navigate multiple worldviews and perspectives, both within academic research contexts and at the interface of science and society. Spaces that cultivate playfulness can open up participants to express, share, question, and transform how they experience and act in the world. Our interdisciplinary team of ten researchers has been co-designing card decks and other playful materials and activities that can support transdisciplinary collaborations. Our goal is to consolidate these learnings into a “travelling library for transformative play” to circulate widely and enable collaborations to address important societal challenges.
The Playing with the Trouble team recently received a UCo grant for 2024 to continue their unusual teamwork!
What is this project about?
Project team:
Jet Vervoort (WUR), Dan Lockton (TU/e), Raimon Ripoll-Bosch (WUR), Jessica Duncan (WUR), Maikel Waardenburg (UU), Josephine Chambers (UU), Joost Vervoort (UU), Joyce Browne (UMCU)
Contact team: Raimon Ripoll-Bosch (raimon.ripollbosch@wur.nl)
Interested in who is working on this project? You can find all CUCo fellows on our fellow page.
This project was also funded through an Unusual Collaborations grant in 2022 and 2023
Read about their work in 2022 below
“Games—especially multiplayer games—offer unique possibilities for building strong interdisciplinary connections.”
What is this project about?
A critical challenge for interdisciplinary collaborations is to navigate multiple worldviews and perspectives, both within academic research contexts, and in engagement with societal stakeholders. Playing games can open up spaces where participants can express and share how they experience the world. In an institutional context, games can help to explore different roles, perspectives, and rules, and expand collective imagination and agency. Our interdisciplinary team of nine researchers will co-create a toolbox of modular mini-games that can support diverse teams in various stages of their collaborations. This full proposal builds on a two-day workshop in which we ‘play tested’ initial prototype game mechanics. Building on insights from our workshop, we will co-develop modular mini-games and pilot these within inter- and transdisciplinary case studies in both research and education. The case studies will be connected to the team’s diverse research projects covering a diversity of domains (e.g. climate, socioeconomic transitions, health), with stakeholders inside and outside academia. We will facilitate learning across case studies through meetings, training sessions and joint activities. The resulting mini-games will be shared in an online library, hosted by CUCo, accompanied by example applications and other guiding materials in order to help users benefit from the toolbox.
The sketchnotes are courtesy of Elvia Vasconcelos de Gouveia.
How we see the case studies learning from each other—a visualisation of the process
Graphic illustration of how we came up with different types of games that support collaboration and project development.
Before this project started in its form as an Unusual Collaboration it received the SPARK grant. During this time they developed their idea from its inception to what is presented here. If you would like to learn more about this process press the button.
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