About Imagine Alternatives
Imagine Alternatives is an educational project, with free, downloadable and adaptable games at its core. The project started in Uganda but has since spread to other countries!
In the Global North, games and science fiction have longstanding links with futures research, and more recently have developed a strong connection with climate futures, education and behaviour change. By contrast, African speculative cultures are underutilized locally. Children in Kampala who became involved with this project have encountered such games for the first time.
The aims of this project were to create resources that are fun, informative about climate change and co-produced with local students, creatives and educators.
Key outputs of this project are storytelling games: the primary one, Kampala Yénkya, developed with the Uganda Youth for the Environment Club, and a version that can be played for any city – your city – that can be adapted further to represent localized contexts (make a copy and edit this Google Doc). For example, in South Africa, the game has been adapted to imagine the future of the University of Cape Town (see the UCT campus game), and the bilingual Swahili-English Nairobi version was co-created with students from the University of Nairobi. It was also adapted not only for a different setting, but a different purpose – to teach ethics in research at Imperial College (bit.ly/ValuesInResearch).
You can also download the PDF of the version that could be played for any location to print and play:
Alongside the games, we have developed a range of puzzles and activities that, together with Dilman Dila’s stories, have been published in a book introduced by Wole Talabi.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Sussex Sustainability Research Program and the Sussex Humanities Lab.
Imagine Alternatives 