It All Flows Somewhere
"Welcome esteemed guests to this, the planning meeting for our newly founded neighbourhood! You are the planning committee for your neighbourhood, and before you is a map of the area."
It All Flows Somewhere is a place-making game and a communal storytelling workshop. Part of a wider research focus on local and community archiving practices, this game invites players to consider what it means to connect personal stories to those of a city-wide history.
Through a series of playful prompts, topography is laid out, infrastructure develops and histories are charted.
Each game ends with a visit between participants to each of the constructed neighbourhoods, giving the opportunity to reenact some of the histories created through imagined walking tours.
Following the physical game, the neighbourhoods are translated into a digital landscape, providing a document of the session and a way to revisit these spaces, hopefully with new visitors in tow!
Cut & Stick Neighbourhoods was devised for Voidspace Live (Theatre Deli, 09/06/24), and has run as part National Poetry Library’s Poetry Day (Southbank Centre), A MAZE Festival (Silent Green, Berlin), Now Play This’ International Game Design Labs (Goethe Institut) and Norwich Games Festival.
It All Flows Somewhere exists as a game-book zine to play at home. I’m still tinkering with it, but if you would like a copy, send me an email!
Through the zine version, IAFS has been played as far as Buenos Aires and Tokyo so far!