In May 2023, Fields of View and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group agreed upon the objective of the engagement would be to design a workshop for the seminar where delegates from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal would discuss and deliberate the agenda for action in the indo-pacific.
The “Games for Complexity” project aimed to enhance the articulation of synergies in the Indo-Pacific context by combining the elements of the Kattu Kathe game and the Fields of View (FoV) workshop. This project sought to provide a platform for diverse participants from various social, economic, and linguistic backgrounds from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal to share their stories and perspectives about the Indo-Pacific region, thereby challenging conventional narratives of the city. Additionally, the project utilized the FoV workshop tool to stimulate conversations and examine multiple viewpoints on policies and socio-political landscapes in the Indo-Pacific region. The project also involved training facilitators to conduct similar sessions within their respective organizations. The workshops provided structured tools for examining multiple viewpoints on policies and understanding the socio-political actors’ landscape.
The primary objectives of the “Games for Complexity” project were as follows:
- Enable diverse participants to articulate the complexity of their landscapes within the Indo-Pacific context.
- Stimulate conversations and discussions surrounding various perspectives in the Indo-Pacific region.
- Provide tools for structured conversations that examine multiple viewpoints on policies and socio-political landscapes.
- Train 5 facilitators to conduct similar sessions within their organizations.
The project utilized a modified version of the Kattu Kathe game and the FoV workshop to facilitate conversations and storytelling about Bangalore and the Indo-Pacific context. Kattu Kathe is a game that enables diverse participants from different backgrounds to share their personal experiences and stories about Bangalore, challenging the standard narratives of the city. The game encouraged participants to shape the narrative of the city based on their personal narratives, while the FoV workshop provided tools for structured conversations and analysis of multiple perspectives on policies and socio-political landscapes. The FoV workshop, on the other hand, allowed participants to bring their unique perspectives to the table, analyzing problems from different stakeholder viewpoints. This facilitated bottom-up planning and enabled participants to work towards a common vision for social problem-solving.
Session 01: built stories from.
In the game, participants would map out different development interventions on a stylised map of the Indo-Pacific. Each participant placed things based on their priority, and through the game played an emergent map of all the different priorities by different participants emerged. This game helps in better understanding different priorities and makes visible to all any conflicts or synergies present among the various priorities of the participants. The data from this session was used in the next session where further nuances could be teased out.
Session 02: the Fields of View workshop.
The workshop was designed to bring a diverse set of actors with differing perspectives to come together and through a structured set of activities design a common pathway to address the problem. This workshop was divided into two parts, the problem articulation phase and futuring.
