Right 2 Roam - developing community civic engagement through board game design. Focus groups and player-created board game components during workshops with Dundee students 2024-2025

'Right 2 Roam - developing community civic engagement through board game design' was a one year (1/10/2024-20/09/2025) Carnegie Trust research project funded through the Research Incentive Grant.

As part of the the project, we designed and ran a series of workshops to examine how boardgames can be used to I) catalyse discussion and civic engagement around equitable access to public spaces and 2) capture lived experiences of the inequalities of accessing public space and walking alone. This research was conducted using Right 2 Roam (R2R): an original tabletop boardgame designed in response to media coverage and personal stories of women walking alone in public spaces. The game utilises mechanics of imbalance to foreground an applied understanding of systemic inequality of movement and access to public space, including (but not limited to) the experience of gender.

We used the game to investigate how boardgames can prompt discussion, elicit civic engagement around serious topics, and generate an archive of lived experience through game customisation features and post-play discussions in a workshop setting, using Dundee students as a use case.
Data collection took place during 15 workshops with 1-7 players each (54 participants), each session lasting approximately 2.5 hours. Each workshop followed a structured format beginning with an initial gameplay round in quick setup to familiarise participants with the rules and logic of the game. This was followed by a second round in "custom mode" allowing players to produce their own cards and spaces as the game progressed. A short break was scheduled at the midpoint of each workshop, after which a focus group discussion was conducted. During the focus group, the workshop facilitator used a semi-structured group discussion format to explore participants' gameplay experiences and how these related to their real-life experiences of walking alone at night. Participants were encouraged to discuss whether and how the game mirrors their own experience of walking alone at night, to reflect on what features of the game prompted thinking about other people’s safety in public, how they made decisions in the game and devised strategies, what motivated these and how similar these decisions were to real-life similar scenarios, how they interpreted the dice, and what in the game prompted them to reflect and share their own lived experience.

To ensure that all participants across the workshops became aware of the imbalanced game mechanics, in workshops with only two participants, one player received a D6 and one the D10.
Participants were recruited across Higher and Further Education institutions through flyers and newsletters distributed by respective Student Unions and Associations. Participation was incentivised with £15 e-commerce vouchers as compensation for participants' time and contributions.

The study specifically targeted students, as there are several factors associated with student life that influence their experiences of urban spaces after dark: many are experiencing independent nightlife for the first time; students often work part-time in fields such as hospitality or retail to support themselves financially, requiring late-night commutes; and relocation to the city for university typically means moving away from established family support networks. These circumstances contribute to students' experiences with navigating urban spaces at night.

The data are currently embargoed.