Right 2 Roam

70% of women overall and 97% of women in the 18-24 bracket in the UK have experienced sexual harassment in public (UN Women UK, 2021). One in two women feel unsafe walking alone after dark in a quiet street near their home as well as in a busy public place, and four out of five women feel unsafe walking alone after dark in a park or other open space (ONS, 2022). It is these frightening statistics, alongside the seemingly daily senseless acts of violence against women walking, that led us to create Right 2 Roam.

Right 2 Roam is an original tabletop boardgame for 2-4 players based on the gendered lived experiences of walking alone. 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 movement and safety in public places. The game is a purposefully imbalanced game of chance to mirror systemic injustices and imbalances of power.

Right 2 Roam makes a significant contribution to game design, board games as activism, and games for civic engagement. It demonstrates the power of board games to represent the systemic imbalances and inequalities linked to gendered experience, and how critical play can be used to catalyse discussion around lived experience of- and equitable access to- public 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 public spaces, with routes to impact on civic engagement and community-driven co-creation of safer and more equitable public spaces.