When we began ACES in 2020, we could not have anticipated quite how central the idea of resilience would become to the project. ACES – A Community-Centred Educational Model for Developing Social Resilience – brought together partners and communities across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam to explore how playful, frugal, and co-creative approaches to education could contribute to individual, community, and institutional resilience.

From an initiative to an evolving programme of research, practice, and impact Founded in 2015, GameChangers began with a relatively simple proposition: game design and playful learning should not be confined to game developers, specialist technologies, or particular disciplines. Instead, the principles and processes of games and play could be opened up as accessible ways of thinking, designing, learning, collaborating, and addressing problems.

On 5 August 2026, the FAiR (Frugal Artist-in-Residence) Exhibition officially opened at the Gallery in Coventry University's Delia Derbyshire Building, welcoming more than 70 registered guests, who explored the exhibition, contributed to a growing collective artwork, and shared their reflections on the role of creativity in shaping more sustainable futures. The exhibition is the culmination of the FAiR project, an international collaboration that demonstrates how art can become a powerful bridge between environmental awareness, scientific understanding, and community participation.

Teaching project management presents a familiar challenge. While students can learn planning tools, risk management techniques and project methodologies through lectures and case studies, these approaches often struggle to recreate the uncertainty, complexity and collaboration that define real-world projects. How can students experience the need to adapt when priorities suddenly change? How do they learn to negotiate competing viewpoints, communicate decisions, and respond to unexpected challenges before entering professional practice?

There was a time when much of my research life revolved around deformable models, force feedback devices, soft tissue simulation, and the challenge of making virtual objects feel real. Long before my work on playful design, serious games, and community-engaged research, my PhD journey at the University of Warwick explored the modelling of deformable soft objects for interactive simulation, particularly within medical training contexts.

Over the years, one of the most meaningful aspects of our work has been watching how ideas evolve through practice. What started as an exploration of game design and playful learning has grown into a connected ecosystem of projects, communities, and interventions. The GameChangers initiative has never been a single project. It is a platform for experimentation, where research, teaching, and community engagement come together through play and design.

We are currently supporting two exciting pilot projects developed through the CreaTech Frontiers initiative, where freelancers and creative practitioners have received seed funding to explore and prototype new creative technology ideas. Led across the West Midlands, CreaTech Frontiers supports creative businesses through expert guidance on growth, investment, intellectual property, and commercialisation. The programme provides business support, thematic workshops, mentoring, and access to R&D opportunities to help creative innovators develop and test new ideas.

Six years ago, in May 2020, Game Science in Hybrid Learning Spaces was published at a moment when education was beginning to confront profound change. What the book set out to do was not only to explore games and play, but to rethink how learning itself can be designed across spaces, contexts, and experiences. Looking back now, one of its most important contributions was not just hybrid learning as a concept, but the design considerations required to make hybrid learning meaningful.

I recently found myself returning to Jon Bellion’s making of video for Guillotine. Not out of nostalgia, but out of curiosity. What does it mean to make something in a way that feels alive, emergent, and deeply human? Bellion is not one to follow a trend but speaks from his heart and creative core. What struck me this time was not the song itself, but the conditions under which this masterpiece came into being.

In August 2026, the Delia Derbyshire Building will host FAiR4All, a new exhibition under the GameChangers RemixPlay Summit Series (to be launched during the first week of August). Mark your calendars! Building on the success of the original FAiR (Frugal Artist-in-Residence) programme, this exhibition marks a significant step in translating a community-engaged, playful, and art–science approach from Malaysia into a UK context.

Buy Game Science in Hybrid Learning Spaces (Digital Games, Simulations, and Play in Learning) 1 by Arnab, Sylvester (ISBN: 9781138239760) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

As part of the ESRC-Funded RE:PLAY Project, we recently piloted a playful learning approach to project management within an engineering module at Coventry University. Working collaboratively with RE:PLAY Fellow Neil O'Shea and RE:PLAY Design Fellows Safaa Sindi and Tamar Maclellan, this session explored how hands-on, scenario-driven activities can support students in developing project management thinking in more engaging and applied ways.

This morning, my iPhone reminded me that nine years ago today, we were hosting our very first RemixPlay. A room alive with movement. People playing, laughing, debating, building, and discovering new ideas through hands-on experimentation with one another. It was not the specific edition that struck me. It was the journey. Looking back, RemixPlay has quietly mapped the evolution of how we think about play, research, and community over nearly a decade.

The ACES (A Community-Centred Educational Model for Developing Social Resilience through Play) project addresses global challenges in education by fos…

Ludic Design team at the ESRC IAA Showcase evening Oct 2025 As we come to the end of 2025, we are reflecting on a year that has been firmly grounded in community-engaged practice, care-centred research, and the continued development of playful and frugal design as a serious research methodology. This year, our work has not been defined by scale alone, but by depth of engagement.

Earlier this month, Prof Katherine Wimpenny and I travelled to Indonesia as part of the British Council funded BRIDGE-HE project – Building Disability-Inclusive Research Culture in Indonesian Highe…

Earlier this month, Prof Katherine Wimpenny and I travelled to Indonesia as part of the British Council funded BRIDGE-HE project – Building Disability-Inclusive Research Culture in Indonesian Higher Education (HE). The project aims to understand and strengthen the experiences of disabled students across the student journey, from undergraduate to postgraduate study and into early academic careers. This phase of our fieldwork centred on…

At the heart of every educational or societal transformation lies a simple question: Who is being included, and how?For over a decade, our work has explored how inclusive and equitable design, grou…

At the heart of every educational or societal transformation lies a simple question: Who is being included, and how?For over a decade, our work has explored how inclusive and equitable design, grounded in play, creativity, and co-creation, can reshape learning and community engagement across diverse contexts. From CreativeCulture in Borneo to ACES, FAiR, and I-HEDU, this journey has been about designing…

Two new articles published this summer capture the journey and insights from the ACES project, which I had the privilege to lead with colleagues and partners across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Together, we explored how playful design, frugality, and co-creation can open new possibilities for inclusive and sustainable education in resource-constrained contexts. The first article, published in Social Sciences & Humanities Open…

This study investigates how playful and frugal values can be integrated to support inclusive and sustainable STEM learning in resource-constrained and…

Strap in for breakneck gaming speeds with the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe™ SSD. Crush load times and slash throttling, lagging, and texture pop-ins for a smooth, fast experience that lets you compete at your...

I realise I haven’t shared many updates over the past year, but in truth, that’s because so much of our time has been joyfully absorbed in the work itself. 2024 has been a beautifully full year—ric…