Play, (Re)Design, and Learn: Snail Community Garden
October 4
Atrium | 2-4 PM
What kinds of communities can we build for ourselves, and what role(s) would we play within them?
Join us as we activate the Snail Community Garden, a collaborative, world-building, and map-making game. This guided workshop will be led by members of Play Design Learn research group (https://playdesignlearn.ca) at the University of Calgary.
Snail Community Garden is created based on the role-playing game Beak, Feather + Bone, drawing on the themes in the exhibition Presence. This game allows players to take on a specific snail role, then claim and describe different structures on a map. Over the course of the game, players create a story about their snail community, and by extension, the exhibition, Presence.
In groups of four, participants will first play a few rounds of the Snail Community Garden, followed by a tour of Presence, led by associate curator Muriel N. Kahwagi. The final part of the workshop will consist of participants collaboratively redesigning the game – this can take the form of updating some of the general rules, changing the roles of the snails within the community garden, or anything else you can imagine.
This workshop is part of the Play, (Re)Design, and Learn Group’s research project, Understanding Art and Each Other through Tabletop Game Redesign in Gallery and Community Spaces. The workshop will be recorded (i.e., video and observation notes) for research purposes, and the researchers ask the participants to consent to the research.
This workshop is programmed in conjunction with Presence, on view at Contemporary Calgary until November 9, 2025.
Snail Community Garden was developed in partnership with the Play, (Re)design, and Learn Group (playdesignlearn.ca) at the University of Calgary.
Free with registration.
