A few months back, I worked with a client to design their away day. Working with Jamie, Paul and the programme team, we blended team updates with a new board game about planning to make a brilliant day.
About the day
The intention of the day was to bring people across the MHCLG digital planning programme together to have a chance to:
- learn more about what’s been happening across the programme
- celebrate achievements
- meet other people from the programme face to face
- learn something new about planning
After some fantastic updates from the teams, we launched into a four-round game called The Planning Game.
About the planning game
This game was a fun game about planning where players explored
- communities and their needs
- planning complexity and trade-offs
- regional priorities
All in the context of building a Local Plan.
It was a great opportunity for participants to work with people in other teams while reflecting on the challenges of planning.
Participants worked in teams; each was given a different town with different needs. Those needs helped them create priorities for their town.
They were then given a budget to create a plan to improve their town, and in the final round, a newly elected mayor (Mayor Downey for us) gave them new regional priorities (along with a request for a new golf course).
And finally, they presented their town’s Local Plan.
“We had so much fun! I also learned about aspects of the planning system I hadn’t known before”
Steve Messer from his blog post The best away day ever
The best bit is that MHCLG has made the game public. You can read more about it and download the assets on GitHub here.
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