Ylva Björnberg: Collective Imagination Projects, Trainings and Podcast Interviews

Trainings in Imagination Methodologies and Co-Creative Leadership

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Imagination-led Projects

Generate Life: A Climate-Energy Future Megagame

In this semi-immersive 4-hour Megagame experience, players encounter an intense number of climate events and energy shortages in a comprised time frame 2030-2060, while acting act as citizen council members of their local municipality. With the quest to keep life worth living for all, players interact through board game mechanics, enter altered states of consciousness, and meet non-human characters with the power to change the outcomes.

Created by a transdisciplinary and diverse design team of four, the game involves multiple rounds of gameplay with real-time decision-making by participants. Three types of transformations are implemented in the game Generate Life: 1) Awareness of Interconnectedness of Challenges, a Systemic View 2) Exploring New Ways of Thinking 3) Exploring a Different Relation to Nature.

Game Mechanics and More-Than-Human Stakeholders

The game is centered around several challenging and interconnected Game Events that were built from various future scenarios and predictions on climate change, energy scarcity, and societal transformation. Participants are divided into Citizen Specialist Teams, each responsible for different sectors such as environment, finance, and infrastructure. A separate, improvised role-play team, Public Opinion, further inspires/disrupts gameplay and evaluates the outcomes in each round. During the evolution of gameplay, Public Opinion roles are selected from an array of more-than-human stakeholders, such as future generations, a lake, a forest, mycelium, or animals. The game also utilizes mindfulness techniques through bespoke guided meditations crafted to facilitate various levels of engagement, such as character immersion, open-mindedness, and creative thinking, facilitate reflection and To support exiting the game reality and re-enter ordinary reality.

Theoretical Foundation

The game draws on systems thinking and posthumanism, emphasizing the interconnectedness of societal challenges, as well as of human and non-human actors. The game promotes interdisciplinary dialogue, encouraging participants to explore holistic solutions by considering technological, environmental, and social factors in tandem. By introducing "Public Opinion" as non-human participants representing different aspects of nature, the game also integrates posthumanist perspectives, inspiring participants to question their relationship with and role within the natural world.

Results: Systemic Understanding

The game has successfully demonstrated interdisciplinary innovation by encouraging players to devise creative, holistic solutions to complex problems. For instance, players experienced water rationing affecting the energy output from a local biofuel plant, in turn affecting local public transportation. New solutions emerged, such as a bicycle-based transport system for the elderly, supported by unemployed youth paid with subsidized housing (surplus from economic downturn, another game event), creating a multifaceted solution to interconnected challenges. Feedback indicated that players appreciated the integration of meditation, which helped balance the cognitive intensity of the game. The role-playing elements, particularly the inclusion of nature element perspectives, sparked discussions about the necessity for deeper societal transformation in response to environmental crises.

Generate Life was the examination project of the course Megagame - Design for Sustainable Development in a Changing Climate at Linköping University, held on June 13, 2024.

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