No time for the future? How to use conversation game methods for more inclusive and empowering research practices in time-pressured worlds

This proposed Skills Development Workshop aims to provide researchers with the skills to implement conversation game methods within a socio-environmental context. This workshop will enable the participants to design conversation games that can be integrated into their research and engagement practices. Furthermore, the workshop will provide the participants with hands-on experiences in how to conduct a conversation game. The workshop will highlight how conversation games are an inclusive and empowering way to introduce research participants to complex issues they are not familiar with and gather the participants' perspectives on those issues. Furthermore, we will discuss how the conversation game can be co-created and be part of a bigger portfolio of research and engagement activities. To illustrate this process we draw on our experience of developing and using the PlayDecide conversation game in the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece in order to explore the societal dimensions of an EU Horizon 2020 pilot project that sought to develop new Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage technologies. We highlight the challenges and potentials of using conversation games to engage communities in projects where climate technologies and the socio-environmental futures they bring are still being explored and contested. As the flexibility of the PlayDecide game, means that its application is not limited just within a socio-environmental context, the workshop participants will also have the opportunity to discuss how to deploy it in other research contexts including Public Health and Artificial Intelligence.