The Future Cities Game is a pioneering way of developing partnerships with key audiences in the UK and internationally that are committed to making cities better places for the future.

It is a two-day activity to enable people to find creative solutions to long-term challenges facing cities. It has been developed, piloted and evaluated by the British Council over a period of two years.

The aim of the game is to come up with the best idea to improve quality of life in cities. It can be used to widen participation within urban regeneration and social change programmes, and can be played about a specific area within a city, the city as a whole, or in response to common challenges facing cities around the world.

Local stakeholders choose the location and participants for each game to ensure that it is tailored to the local context. Players compete in teams to generate, test and present ideas that are innovative, challenge convention, feasible, relevant to global and local need and that could have a lasting impact for communities.

Each team is made up of players from different disciplines, backgrounds and with differing outlooks. Teams have to use a range of skills to win - soft skills such as presentation, negotiation and reaching consensus; and hard skills such as design, research and interviewing.

A games master leads the players through ten steps giving the players a set of tools to help them to consult together and with stakeholders, develop ideas, document and present their findings.

The teams identify common challenges facing the city (environmental, social, economic and cultural) and create solutions, before testing their ideas by research and consultation with the general public. Experts and community members work with players to test out their thinking and to improve the quality of their ideas.

At the end of the game the local stakeholders are presented with the ideas. Everyone gets to vote on the best ones and to think through how they can be taken forward in the city once the game has finished.

For more information, please contact gaynor.anthony@britishcouncil.org.