Right 2 Roam green edition

Access to green spaces remains a social justice issue which impacts primarily on marginalised groups and communities. Women and LGBTQ+, young people, people with disabilities, people from deprived and underdeveloped areas, people with low incomes and people from ethnic minorities find nature spaces more inaccessible or less safe (Mental Health Foundation, 2021; Groundwork UK, 2021; Natural England, 2020). Building on Right 2 Roam, a board game about the many inequalities of movement in public spaces, Right 2 Roam Green Edition focuses on these inequalities of access to and exclusion from green spaces.

Right 2 Roam Green is an original tabletop boardgame for 2-4 players based on the lived experiences of access and engagement with green spaces. Through a rigorous process of making, playtesting, and reflection, our research aimed to explore how board game design can be used to prompt discussion around the inequalities of safety and access to green spaces and wildlife. The game is a purposefully imbalanced game of chance to mirror systemic injustices and imbalances of power and privilege.

Right 2 Roam Green makes a significant contribution to game design, board games as activism, and games for civic engagement and policy consultation. It demonstrates the power of board games to represent the systemic imbalances and social inequalities linked to intersectional exclusion, and how critical play can be used to catalyse discussion around lived experience of- and equitable access to- green space. The game has been deployed in contexts in which players can both i) learn more about the experiences of others, and ii) link play to their local communities and green spaces, with routes to impact on civic engagement and community-driven co-creation of safer and more equitable green spaces.