Bumper Crop: Sustaining Lived Practices through Fields of Play

Misha Myers

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‘Bumper Crop‘ is a physical and digital board game developed by a research team of UK/India academics and practitioners (Dr. Misha Myers, Saswat Mahapatra, Dr. Nina Sabnani and Dr. Anirudha Joshi) working in partnership with Digital Green, a Delhi-based non-profit that combines technology and community engagement to improve the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of small farmer livelihoods. The game was developed as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council research project, Play to Grow: Augmenting Agriculture with Social Impact Games, whose original aim was to design and test a digital game based on the experiences and challenges of being an Indian farmer as a method of storytelling and learning to promote young urban adults’ awareness of issues facing small farmers in India. However, initial results of playtests with both focus groups of young urban adults in Mumbai and farmers in Madhya Pradesh revealed that the game may be most effective for a different purpose and audience than originally intended. The farmers’ gameplay drew upon the participatory, immersive and dialogic advantages of digital gaming and revealed how game and games thinking can be employed to leverage the power of positive peer-to-peer identification and feedback to create engaging opportunities for learning and sharing locally relevant skills amongst farmers themselves.

Biography

Misha Myers is a researcher and practitioner who creates digital, located and interactive performance. She is leader of the Articulating Space Research Centre at Falmouth University. Bridging ethnographic and creative practices, her research is inter-disciplinary and often involves collaborations with organisations and communities within specific socio-cultural contexts. She is interested in creating new methods for sharing knowledge and learning about complex issues of place through various interactive media, including games, digital artworks and live performance. She has published a number of articles and chapters in books and journals and project blogs on located, participatory, mobile and digital performance practices, and the potential offered by the convergence of these practices for a socially engaged practice.