Your Choice set goes down a storm at Green Man

Last month, Rising Ape took Your Choice: The Game to a field in the heart of Green Man Festival as part of the famous Einstein’s Garden, an area of the fest dedicated to exploring science, nature and other wild ideas.

Each day, at 2.30pm sharp, makeshift cancer research groups sat down in the Garden’s workshop dome to play the board game element of Your Choice and got to grips with choosing the direction of their research. More than 60 people get involved over the weekend, working together in their teams to make the most of their resources, beat cancer sooner and get to the top of the scoreboard. In the end, Team Maroon and Green won the comp by a single point (!) to win the prizes on offer.

Before starting the weekend, we had some questions about whether Your Choice would work as a purely facilitated game, without the powerful monologue performances… And at a music festival. These questions were answered and, what’s more, we learned some new things about the game.

Question 1: Who would play it? Here was our first surprise: The audience was much more diverse than we expected, and the game worked well for everyone! We had teams of children, families, couples, people likely under the influence of some interesting substances… The most pleasant surprise was that children as young as 12 were really grasping the idea of how to play and we had a few younger than that who were into the dice rolling and gem spending. It got very competitive.

And while we thought people with a relationship with cancer research would be interested, in fact most of the teams we spoke to had little or no previous knowledge of cancer or cancer research. We got people involved by setting up an example board at the front of the workshop dome next to the high score board, and asked anyone who stopped for a moment if they wanted to play a game. It’s hard to resist the lure of a crisp deck of cards and a pile of shiny gems.

Question 2: Would people stick around? Yes. All the teams playing the game were fully engaged for the whole forty minutes of play time. Although there was an option to leave after the first 20 minute section, everyone wanted to carry on and finish the second section.

This meant some teams were engaged with the activity for nearly an hour solid, even with all the distractions available at a music festival! It was commented on by Einsteins Garden staff that it was unusual to see people stay for so long in the workshop dome and it’s great to see that, as hoped, the game can hold attention without the monologue breaks.

Question 3: How would people deal with the theme? There were several moments in games where people, parents mainly, talked to the rest of their team about the types of cancer that had occurred in their family and it was nice to see these conversations happen naturally through playing.

And there was more food for thought. Interestingly, we had several questions about whether it was possible to buy the game at the festival, and a teacher said they would love to get hold of it for their biology class. Making the game available to a wider audience is something we will definitely be interested in exploring with CRUK.

So engaging music lovers with cancer research in a wet Welsh field? Check! Thanks to everyone who made the weekend possible, especially Will, Maddy of Einstein’s Garden and the workshop dome volunteers. We look forward to the next outing for Your Choice. Could it be in your area?