Our project is finally taking shape, and at a fast pace at that!
We started working full steam ahead on the board game idea. Ashwini found this card game made from the LSE Kuwait Program research project ‘Public Space in Kuwait: From user behavior to policymaking". The goal of Kuwaitscapes is to facilitate discussions and encourage players to think about spaces alongside social and physical tools that can improve them. Mechanics-wise, the game requires players to match tool cards to improve an area for a specified character.
When we did our rounds around Daniel Spectrum asking residents about their favorite place, the importance of family emerged as a narrative. While our class is with adults and not youth like previous years, we still wanted our final project to engage with a wide age range. So, we wanted civic engagement to take on a fun form, a game where the whole family can participate in.
After getting on the same page, we used Kuwaitscapes as a model for our game and then began to tweak the rules and style to fit our themes of placemaking and nostalgia. The three of us, excited about the inception of this brand-new idea, quickly began to make test cards to play. Roya and Abdi, in their competitive spirit, created as many Tool Cards as possible. The prompts in the Tool Card ranged from “Ball” to “Sunday in the Park.” Ashwini started to draw (rather poorly, except for the Nelson Mandela Park Public School), the Area and Character Cards.
Ashwini’s beautiful drawing of Nelson Mandela Park Public School.
After we had a decent amount of Tool Cards, we decided to give it a test run. Immediately as we began to play, our game took on a storytelling element, with each player defending the tool they chose with a story that outlined why it was the best way for the ‘Character’ to engage with the ‘Area.’ The rounds also made way for new ideas because we were still struggling on how to incorporate sites that didn’t exist anymore into the game. We finally landed on the following idea, the individual that makes the most compelling case as to why the landmark would be most meaningful to the community they have collected, wins the site (for context: the player who wins gets to keep the Character cards to add to their community after every round).
Our sample cards
The practice rounds were incredibly uplifting because they were enjoyable, evoked reflections on civic engagement, while also fulfilling our interests at the intersection of nostalgia and placemaking. Overall, we felt proud of our progress. As much as this project is for the community, we equally wanted to reflect the collaboration between the three of us. Although we’ve pivoted our ideas a lot, the narratives theme has remained, and while our project showcases and creates narratives about spaces in Regent Park, it also reflects the narratives we’re making in our collaboration.
The next step for the group is to create a prototype board, cards, and figures. Abdi has been tasked with recruiting children and youth in Regent Park to draw the areas we have chosen. The decision for children to draw these cards is to evoke a feeling of nostalgia, one of the themes of our project. The rest of us are working on visuals for the cards and board, with our shared Canva ready to go!
We are also progressing our vision for the website, and the research for the Areas are well underway. For sites that do not exist anymore, Abdi has been tasked with collecting narratives to keep their memory alive. The website will also feature a section where folks can contribute their memories, creating space for dialogue well beyond our project timeline. And perhaps the most challenging task of all, we are brainstorming a title for our game. If all else fails, we may go with RE-VISIT.
The RE-VISIT team members are Abdirahman, Ashwini, and Roya