Our current theme Live, Love, Learn is all about sustainable education – but how can we make complex issues around the climate accessible and understandable? Young people in Birmingham have been making their own contribution, working with researchers to develop a game that helps players learn about the role of the built environment in the climate emergency.
13 young people aged 14-18 from Balsall Heath worked together with researchers from Birmingham City University to create CLIMANIA – a game to stimulate creativity, discussions and collaboration. The game is available to download, print and play for free.
In CLIMANIA, participants have to add green technology to their homes (‘retrofitting’) while facing different environmental challenges and opportunities. Players take turns to answer questions about climate and built environment issues, building up their climate change knowledge to win retrofit components. It’s a race against time to reach the centre of the board, reinforcing the message of rising global temperatures.
The game was created using a series of creative workshops to share climate change facts and to discuss how the built environment currently impacts on climate change, and how reforms could cut emissions and help communities to adapt. The young people interviewed people from within their communities to find out about their climate concerns, supported by professionals who helped to produce the game.
“The project helped me understand the amount of energy humans use and waste on a daily basis and reducing this could help our climate. My main takeaway is that we could come together to come up with solutions to help the world we live in.”
Anam, one of the young researchers from Balsall Heath
The Climate Action Game project was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
If you’d like to play the game with your school or community group (or just with a group of friends who like board games) you can download a printable version of the game for free. The researchers are also working on a professionally printed version for people to buy.
Anf if you’re looking for more ideas to spread the message about climate and other social justcie issues, pop into Peace Hub for a chat, and browse our resource library for inspiration.