Panopoly Game
What if we put ourselves in each other's shoes to think the city ?
What is Panopoly?
Panopoly was created for the 2021 edition of the International Geography Festival of Saint-Dié des Vosges, where it was performed for the first time to the general public. It was also performed at the Notre-Dame de Strasbourg high school for an audience of students and at the Haute École Pédagogique de Lausanne for an audience of future teachers. Finally, it was presented at Caritas Alsace, the Brussels Academy/Brussels Study Institute and at the University of Paris/Nanterre.
It is a game about public spaces that helps to perceive, design and verbalize. Panopoly helps to reflect on seemingly self-evident realities about design and interaction in public space. Why do we like one space but not another despite its "beauty"? Is this space suitable for everyone? What can be done to improve it? Which people use it? How do they interact with others? What are the unwritten rules they follow and what happens if someone does not follow them? How are the customs distributed? Are there conflicts with respect to this distribution? How do they manifest themselves?
The answer to these questions deserves a fine look at the space and an ability to verbalize its qualities that we are not used to. After having chosen his own card, the player is led to reflect on one or more of these aspects to then exchange his re- flexions with the other players, in the idea of a co-construction of knowledge.
The game thus first allows one to refine one's view of the public space, then, through the design of a scenette, to put this in relation to one's own embodied knowledge, made up of perceptions, feelings, experiences. Finally, in the stage of construction of the scenette and common reflection, the game triggers speech and helps to verbalize what has been observed and experienced.
Panopoly addresses a multitude of different audiences and situations: It can be used prior to a consultation or citizen assembly about an urban project; it can be proposed as a school activity in the context of civic education; it can help refine the reading of spaces in architecture or engineering schools; it can be used in awareness campaigns about disability in public space; finally it can be proposed by HRDs and played within companies as a "coaching game", to create a climate of trust between members of a team by breaking the ice and encouraging speech.
How does the game work?
Panopoly is a game of movement and thought. Its object is the relations of people with and in public space. The latter being considered both in its physical materiality and as a social space.
Urban arrangements, body postures, interactions, and gazes are the subject of 20 game cards. Each card contains a title, expressed as a general principle, and a drawing, which is conceived as one of multiple variations of that principle.
Each player chooses a card and practices, together with one or more partners, to act it out as a theatrical scene. Once the scene has been played, it is related to other concrete experiences from everyday life, thus broadening the discussion on the theme addressed by the card and, more generally, on one's own vision of the city.
The game consists of 5 steps:
1) Choose a card.
.2) Find one or more partners to play it.
3) Practice.
(Depending on the time and resources available, practice can range from simple script design in the space of an hour or two to longer, more complex workshops. The latter can take place over several days, include the intervention of a director and prior outings to the city to observe how the principle expressed by the map plays out).
4) Get on stage and perform in front of an audience.
5) Recount a real-life experience that recalls the scene being performed.
Panopoly au lycée Provence de Lausanne, printemps 2023
Une saynète sur le phénomène du "manspreading" issue du jeu Panopoly. La saynète a été crée puis jouée par les élèves de dernière année du lycée Provence de Lausanne.
Photos
Authors
Irene Sartoretti, architect-urbanist and sociologist - @email
Stéphanie Monnier Galloni d'Istria, graphic designer and illustrator - @email
Contributors to the creation of the game : Juliette Bessett, Lydie Gustin (actress), Emilie Ludmann (psychologist), Virginie Pantigny (psychomotrician), members of the association Turbulence of Saint-Dié des Vosges and researchers and doctoral students of the chair Spatial Intelligence of the Polytechnic University Hauts-de-France.
