Chart the Course is a role-playing game used to encourage organizational learning about public engagement through creative brainstorming and empathy-building. Buy it here!
Players strategize and create plans for engagement by selecting from different tactics promoting engagement, including open data research, social media campaigns, and street polling to connect with their community members about pressing civic issues such as public safety, education, and affordable housing. Over the course of 45 minutes, players decide whether to emphasize transparency, creativity, or inclusivity in their plans.
How to play
You can now purchase a copy of Chart the Course here!
The object of the game is to create a public engagement plan that sufficiently meets the community’s needs, in order to build trust with them. Players represent a team of Capital City public engagement planners tasked with developing an engagement strategy for a project. Public engagement can be a “messy” and evolving process, with necessarily limited resources of time, energy, and funding. Players must decide whether to invest in approaches that emphasize transparency, creativity, or inclusivity. Along the way, players encounter feedback from the public, variously satisfied with the approach. The players’ ability to anticipate and respond to the public’s needs will earn public trust and allow players to gain points in the game.
