Enacting serious game co-design as an exploratory space for sustainability transformations

Organizer: Neil Powell
Format: Online, Evening

Abstract:
Science-informed, reductionist policy has systematically failed to address wicked situations. Such situations are highly interconnected and unpredictable. As a consequence, the implementation of so-called desirable interventions can lead to the export of vulnerabilities within and across different societal domains, sectors, intersections and scales. Systemic practice is an emerging field, and highlights the need to enrich scientific inquiry and policy actions through action learning with an “extended peer community” as a means to navigate wicked situations. Serious game co-design can serve as an exploratory space for multiple stakeholders to cross knowledge boundaries, stimulate anticipatory imagination, navigate “wicked” situations, and explore different pathways for sustainability transformation. It is within this setting that co-design process has the potential to enhance the comprehension of wicked situations, and foster self-organised concerted action without imposing a convergence of perspectives amongst diverse stakeholders. This session introduces serious game co-design as a systemic practice and assesses its potential to reconcile the wicked problem of nutrient enrichment in the Baltic Sea. Thereafter we will deliberate over its methodological contribution to the existing body of knowledge on systemic practices to navigate wicked situations.

Themes: Integrated Action for the SDGs, Knowledge-to-Action