What if rethinking sustainability didn’t start with a policy, a TED Talk, or a product—but with a story?

What if building a circular economy wasn’t about enforcing new systems but about remembering- and reactivating - ways of living that communities have practiced for generations?

This is the question I carried with me when I began Circular Communities - a participatory design project that explores cultural knowledge, ‘waste,’ resourcefulness, and community-led circular practices. What I didn’t expect was that it would also become a game. And even more unexpectedly, it would become a joyful, collaborative space where people connected deeply across disciplines, cultures, and campuses - through storytelling, laughter, strategy, and collective reflection.

Thanks to the UAL Post-Grad Community, I was able to create an Interest Group that became the beating heart of the project.

Over the course of ten weeks, this group brought together postgraduate students from all UAL campuses, as well as staff, alumni, and members of the wider community outside UAL. We met weekly to share ideas, test prototypes, reflect on cultural stories, and build the game from the ground up.

At the core of the Circular Communities Interest Group is a belief: circularity is not new. Many cultures have long practiced what we now call the "circular economy"—through repair, reuse, repurposing, and community care. But these practices are often overlooked in dominant climate narratives.

The game challenges this by inviting players to draw on ancestral knowledge, personal experiences, and collective imagination to solve real-world problems.

The interest group became the perfect space to explore this collaboratively. People brought insights from fashion, design, education, game studies, environmental science, cultural theory—and personal family traditions. Every session added something new. Someone might say, “My grandmother used to dry orange peels to clean pots,” while another shared how their community swapped clothes long before the term “clothing rental” existed.

We didn’t just talk about these ideas—we designed with them. I facilitated co-design sessions where participants helped shape the game's mechanics, story prompts, tokens, and even the challenges. Over 14 sessions, the group tested early versions, offered feedback, and playtested new iterations. Some challenges were simple, like managing community composting; others invited deeper reflection—like confronting privilege in access to sustainable choices.

Along the way, I connected with Michael Hunter, a game designer whose support was instrumental in helping me shape the logic and mechanics of the game. His expertise helped translate complex systems thinking into accessible gameplay.

The game is cooperative - meaning no one wins unless everyone wins. This was an intentional choice, rooted in the idea that real change comes from collaboration, not competition. Players must share resources, solve challenges, and tell stories that connect to their lives or cultures. The result is a form of serious play that’s never dry or didactic. It’s human, hilarious, and deeply insightful.

Here’s what some participants had to say:

“I loved the storytelling aspect, but I also love games so gaining and sharing points was fun. I've never played a game where we're all on the same team, so it was a great message of collectivity, ecocentricity and collaboration.”

“I like that those cards trigger your thinking and we tell our stories to each other as inspirations or as new perspectives. Most liking the pressure cooker community challenge!”

“Learning all the different ways people practice environmental consciousness in their lives.”

“That as long as you’re making small intentional choices, you’re making a difference; sustainability doesn’t have to be perfect but consistent.”

“That using wisdom and traditional practices can reduce the difficulty of sustainable tasks.”

“When players collaborate to help one another, it reflects a community and we all subconsciously look out for each other.”

Each round of play became its own little world, where people explored circularity through the lens of humour, personal reflection, and collective problem-solving. Participants began connecting dots between their lived experiences and the game’s challenges, seeing how cultural practices, values, and habits shaped their understanding of sustainability. It sparked curiosity - sometimes even urgency - to learn more about one’s own roots.

Circular Communities is more than a game. It’s a living research tool. It’s a storytelling platform. It’s a space to imagine futures that are joyful, just, and community-led. It helps people understand that circularity isn’t about perfection - it’s about participation. It doesn’t start with experts. It starts with people.

And perhaps most powerfully, this process of prototyping has created lasting connections. Many of the people I met through the Post-Grad Interest Group have become dear friends and collaborators. Some still message me weeks later with new stories to add or cards they’d like to see in the game. That, to me, is success - not just a finished artefact but an ongoing conversation.

I’m deeply grateful to the UAL Postgraduate Community for making this possible - for offering space, visibility, and connection. In a project about circularity, it feels fitting that everything has come full circle: from stories to game pieces, from research to play, and from ideas to relationships I will carry long after the degree show ends.

Circularity, after all, is not just a design principle. It’s a way of being - with each other and with the world.

Credits:

Visual Identity and Graphic Design: Zetong Chen

Illustration: Tenley Tomlinson

Game Design Consultant: Michael Hunter

UAL Post-Grad Community

Established in 2013, Post-Grad Community is an inclusive platform for all UAL postgraduate students to share work, find opportunities and connect with other creatives within the UAL and beyond. Find out more.

Post-Grad Interest Groups at UAL

UAL’s Post-Grad Community Programme supports a growing number of issue-specific, cross-disciplinary interest groups led by postgraduate students and academics.

​These groups connect creatives with shared research/practice interests across different specialisms and subject areas.

Students have launched interest groups in the past to coincide with exhibitions and symposiums that they have organised under the same theme, or have used Interest Groups as a working group towards research or a standalone event or series.

Interest Groups are a great way to build new networks at UAL for MA and PhD students with shared interests, a useful tool for finding cross-disciplinary students to work with on planned projects/activities, creating new audiences and ways to formally promote your practice.

Find out more and visit the Interest Group Directory