Urban games and board games during lockdown
The periods of lockdowns bring new challenges to the cultural sector, especially to those working on participatory development. However, for our organisation both periods of lockdown have brought new insights about how to stay in touch with the communities when the possibilities of direct contact are limited.
The periods of lockdowns bring new challenges to the cultural sector, especially those working on participatory development. However, for our organization, both periods of lockdown have brought new insights about how to stay in touch with the communities when the possibilities of direct contact are limited. During this period, most of Laimikis activities have moved online in the form of creative workshops, lectures on the development of places' identity through creativity, etc. This is typical for many cultural organizations. But we also need to transform the participatory collective activities in the neighborhoods that we curate into safe forms.
With the urban games (like Urbingo), which Laimikis has developed, it is easy to do - we switch them from the collective mode into an individual one, encouraging people to explore the neighborhoods individually or with family members. And it works perfectly, as Covid-19 brings a demand for walks and other fresh-air activities. However, with the board games part of the joy, the excitement goes missing. During the presentation of the ideas game "Upė - stories flow," the participants asked us for the live event: people want to test the game offline.
Most of the value of the board games comes from the time spent together. The generation of our grandparents used to play board games to spend time together. In nowadays society, small shared rituals that unite a family or group of friends are fading away. It is not enough to relocate traditional board games to the 'virtual mode,' as still the most important component is shared emotions.
p.s. There is a fascinating overview of the boardgames of the previous centuries. For example, here is a description of one of the games, titled "The New Game of Human Life": "In this 1790 game, players moved through different stages of life, from infancy onward. Players moved backward or forward on the game board according to the moral character of the square they landed on. Landing on the “drunkard” square sent a player back while landing on “The Assiduous Youth” sent a player forward. Landing on a career like “The Romance Writer” or “The Dramatist,” per 18th-century social mores, sent players backward."
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