Rebecca Harris

This paper examines how undergraduate design students develop cultural sensitivity through a live brief by the Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT), focusing on global-local tensions in their responses. While prior studies address global-local dynamics, few explore intercultural pedagogy in UK live briefs. Using intercultural communication frameworks, the research highlights the importance of primary research, cross-cultural collaboration, and clear learning outcomes, advocating for stronger cultural fluency integration to better prepare students for inclusive global practice.

In this paper, we explore the use of a playful dilemma activity, a survey and public data analysis to spark citizen awareness and reflection on water use within the UK. Water security ensures access to fresh water for survival and society’s needs. There is significant citizen agency in water security that impacts the freshwater reserves. However, in many countries, water security is under-discussed. Encouraging spaces for individuals to assess their water use, identify waste, and adopt sustainable practices is key to sustaining freshwater resources for the future. We present a case study conducted as part of the GREAT project to stimulate citizen discussion on water use and its subsequent impact on the broader water system. Through a series of activities, citizens can reflect on their water use, consider the future forecast of water security within the UK, and experience a playful dilemma to save a city from the effects of drought. In this dilemma, players are part of an organisation tackling a city’s water crisis. Faced with limited water resources, players analyse data on the population's usage and suggest behaviour changes to reduce consumption. The challenge lies in balancing the need for water conservation with the risk of proposing changes that are resisted by the population. The players must convince the facilitator of both the practicality and acceptability of their plans. Success restores water security, but failure reveals the consequences of inaction. Within this playful discussion space, we create an exchange for citizens to elicit attitudes and preferences on current water use and explore how individuals might be “nudged” into less wasteful behaviour. In this paper, we describe the co-design of this qualitative approach, share findings on attitudes and preferences elicited (n = 19), and reflect on this method as a tool for fostering awareness and meaningful citizen discussions.

This paper examines the potential of digital games as communication tools to reach global audiences, extending beyond established cultural and geopolitical divides. It shows the empirical data gathered in our EU and UKRI-funded Games Realising Effective and Affective Transformation (GREAT) project, where we collaborated with several organizations to investigate this potential. Namely, a significant case study called Play2Act was undertaken in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which forms the focus of this paper. The aims of this study were to find out how much of the world’s population could be reached via digital games and how many citizens would be willing to communicate their climate attitudes in a simple and short survey that was inserted into popular mobile games. Currently, there are 3 billion gamers in the world and the idea of reaching citizens via games to understand their opinions on critical global issues and then passing this information to policy-makers emerged. This is the main objective of our project, as to whether games can act as an effective communication channel between citizens and policy-makers, the context being the climate emergency. Governments do not typically have the opportunity to understand their citizens’ needs fully. The aim of this project is to decrease the barrier and increase representation and democracy. The findings obtained from the Play2Act study suggest that games, moreover their ability to engage, and inherent social dynamics create a unique opportunity to support meaningful dialogue with a large proportion of citizens reached, engaged and completed the surveys. The study engaged with almost 1 million players from every UN recognised country, with only two exceptions, and ca. 181,000 surveys completed, confirming the global reach of games. The next steps are for UNDP to take this information to individual countries with recommendations of appropriate climate policies based on their citizens’ voices, this having huge potential for digital games being policy transformational tools. This research contributes to knowledge on the intersection of technology, culture, and communication and offers valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and stakeholder groups seeking to leverage digital games for social impact.

Mass Observation was the most ambitious and controversial investigation into cultural life in Britain in the twentieth century. Buoyed by a democratic spirit yet riven by eclectic intellectual allegiances, the project, in its inception, revelled in contradictions, many of which have endured in its legacy. This paper revisits the early countercultural aspirations of Mass Observation in order to reflect on the significance of these contradictions for the fate of popular writing. It is argued that the tensions between art, philosophy and science, as articulated in the inaugural statements of Mass Observation, are illuminated by the anti-elitist agenda of the founders. Building on these insights, the paper revisits controversies in the use of Mass Observation data for research and calls upon the findings from a recent recreation of Mass Observation Diary Day (12 May 2024) to argue that Mass Observation's 'science of ourselves' be reconsidered as creative cultural production and a contribution to the 'art of living'.

This report provides a detailed summary of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) exploratory Case Study (GCS1), conducted as part of the EU Horizon-funded Games Realising Effective and Affective Transformation (GREAT) project. UNDP1 Case Study (GCS1) is the first in a series of eight that are undertaken by the project team, engaging with authentic policy stakeholders. Each case study iteratively contributes to the refinement of GREAT case study documentation, research methodology and overall design. GCS1 started in December 2023 and was finalised in March 2024, involving the case study sponsor UNDP, and the GREAT project research team, coordinated by The Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF). This exploratory study adopted the GREAT case study cycle design (figure 1.0), representing an eight-stage process of inquiry underpinned by an established mixed-methods research (MMR) methodology.