Hi All,
I’m organising a small festival in Bedford, UK (near to London)
It’s a mix of classic board games, computer games, RPGs and more immersive games that blend theatre and gaming. It’s aimed at a wide audience, but we attract families with young people aged 7-11 who like to engage with a low-cost, low-risk, comfortable family experience at a time when most people don’t want to go out so much.
We’re very keen to grow this audience base to tap in to an older age group (12-16), making games and experiences for young people who are becoming cultural consumers in their own right. I’m also very keen to see if we can use this opportunity to upskill these young makers.
We’ve a small pot of funding for the festival for the next 2 years, running in mid-January. But we’re also looking at future opportunities for summertime, outdoor work as well.
This January we have a few things planned already, but i’ve been reconsidering how we might run certain parts of the festival. After this week i think it may be a really interesting idea to pass over a whole day of the festival to encouraging attendees to make their own games.
So i’m thinking that we could make a whole day Game Jam on the Saturday or Sunday daytime, and invite a large number of game designers from lots of different disciplines to come in and work with each other and anyone who turns up to create a whole set of new games.
As much of the rest of the planned festival is quite passive it would be great to have a more participatory element embedded.
If there are any Game Designers who are around London/SE England, or can find their way to Bedford for the weekend we can book some Airbnbs in the town, and probably cover some travel costs (depending on how much/how far/how many people)
Its still a very small project at the moment, but it’s deeply embedded into a small community and running through a well established community/professional arts venue. So our focus is very much on creating something unique and special for our local audience.
We really want to achieve that by building relationships with great artists and designers and encouraging them to come and make work with and for our community.
If any of that sounds interesting to you, or if you want more information write below, or send me a DM.
Alex