Taking place over two days at Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre (30th September - 1st October) playARK brings games into the spotlight. The first day centres around a symposium of talks discussing the many facets of Games and Play, and how they are now being used to aid learning in education through to being used in organisations to increase creativity and efficiency. They are also being used to answer and help in solving the major challenges that we face on local and global scales from anti social behaviour to climate change.
The second day is putting theory into practice with a wide range of games being available to play for everyone. The day will offer an exciting and unique mix of games from digital games, retro games and board games to physical games that are played in everyday spaces, where you will be able to explore our urban environments in very different ways.
Event Organiser Alison John explains: “We are really excited about putting on our second games festival, we feel games are a great way in getting people to socialise and to also learn new things about places they feel they know.”
The event comes from the volunteer group thinkARK who have over the last two years created and hosted a number of projects around Cardiff which are centred around bringing communities together and creating Acts of Random Kindness. The playARK event also has a long term goal of increasing discussion as to the power of games and what potential they have in changing education, business and communities.
Alison adds: “Games are seen very much as pure entertainment or something you do when you are young, but we believe they could be far more important than that. Over the last five to ten years games have been developed that are not only creating communities of people, but also the games themselves are involving acts of doing good things within a local scale or in some cases even globally.”
As well as the general games day and talks there will be an opportunity for people to create their own game called the ‘CHAPTER CHALLENGE’. Chapter Challenge is centred around creating a game that will somehow improve the local area in someway. It is an opportunity for people to think of ways of creating and playing a great game that facilitates a positive impact on the environment or community around them.
For more information and ticketing visit http://www.chapter.org/23909.html.
playARK is an annual games festival based in Cardiff, Wales run by the thinkARK group. Their aim is to create immersive gaming experiences that will challenge our perceptions of our everyday surroundings and to create experiences that eventually bring positive behavioural change through games.
