Inspiring climate solutions through games
A collection of climate board games is now available in the Birkbeck Library, initiated by the Birkbeck’s Environmental Education Team and supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundation.
Gamification is increasingly being leveraged as a teaching tool for climate and environmental issues, merging knowledge and insights from environmental sciences, social sciences and the creative arts to help us understand and respond to climate and environmental issues.
The Birkbeck Environmental Education Team has established a collection of climate and environment-themed board and card games for staff to use in their teaching, and the games can also be used for outreach with schools and in the community to share this knowledge further. The project was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundation, the organisation provides grants to those who share the same mission and passion for solving crucial global challenges.
The games are available for staff to borrow from the library’s ‘Reading for Pleasure’ section at Birkbeck. Students can also play the games socially in the library. The Environmental Education team encourage staff and students to explore the games and share feedback with them, to inspire future initiatives.
Each game in the collection explores a different dimension of climate change and connects to different strands of teaching and scholarship at Birkbeck:
Carbon City Zero: World Edition: a collaborative deck-building game in which players develop a sustainable city (1-4 players).
Daybreak: a cooperative board game that models the technological and political response to climate change (1-4 players).
Tipping Point: a card game where players build cities and face extreme weather disasters, and must think creatively about how to face this shared problem (2-4 players).
Kyoto: a game where players assume the role of delegates from different countries, negotiating at a climate conference (6 players).
If you represent an external organisation and would like to organise a climate board games night, contact Birkbeck's Environmental Education team. We recently hosted a well-received and thought-provoking drop-in session - read about our game session at the Science Museum Lates.