Benjamin Stokes

I was proud to moderate an excellent discussion, “LAYERS OF PLACE: Bringing Communities Together by Augmenting Places with Stories, Voices, and Technologies,” on June 22nd, 2021 with the MIT Open Doc Lab. Featuring an interdisciplinary group of artists, scholars, and civic leaders including filmmaker Carla Bishop, urban planner Lafayette Cruise, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and interdisciplinary artist Shey Rivera Ríos will discuss the potentials and challenges of augmenting places within communities and with stories to build bridges and bring people together. What policies, strategies, and environments are needed to make them work? Moderated by civic media scholar Benjamin Stokes.

Watch it here:

From the event description:

We are excited to announce our next Talk & Play, co-sponsored with MIT Press, for the book launch of “LOCALLY PLAYED: Real-World Games for Stronger Places and Communities.” Join us on Tuesday, June 30th from 6:00 to 7:00pm EDT as we discuss the future of urban play, games of resilience, and how games can strengthen cities and neighborhoods.

Join author Dr. Benjamin Stokes in conversation with Katie Salen Tekinbaş as they explore tools to make your own game for community cohesion, history and empowerment.

The world has changed with COVID-19 — but place matters more than ever. As social distancing enters the next phase, we begin to imagine social interaction in parks and on streets. And we need more than economic strategy — we also need social resilience. Are games an answer?

In 2016, city officials were surprised when Pokémon GO brought millions of players out into the public space, blending digital participation with the physical. Yet for local control and empowerment, a new framework is needed to guide the power of mixed reality and pervasive play.

This new book is the first to show cities how they can be strategic with games in a hybrid world. In Locally Played, Benjamin Stokes describes the rise of games that can connect strangers across zip codes, support the “buy local” economy, and build cohesion in the fight for equity. With a mix of high- and low-tech games, Stokes shows, cities can tap into the power of play for the good of the group, including healthier neighborhoods and stronger communities.

The discussant is noted game designer and academic, Katie Salen Tekinbaş. Katie’s own pioneering games for cities — including the Big Urban Game for the Twin Cities in the U.S. — established some of the foundation for modern research on games. This event will be introduced by Games for Changes President, Susanna Pollack.

Benjamin Stokes is a media scholar, professor, and civic designer. He teaches in the American University Game Lab and School of Communication. Previously, Stokes worked at the MacArthur Foundation in their portfolio on Digital Media and Learning. Stokes’s designs have been featured in the Smithsonian Institution and the Guggenheim Museum, including re-purposed payphones for storytelling and neighborhood mapping by bicycle. His also directs the Playful City Lab at American University.

I’m presenting with the amazing Kishonna Gray on Thursday, Oct. 10 for IndieCade (1:30pm, see full schedule). Our session:

Creativity from Activism: From Black Cyberfeminism to Localism and Protest

Description:

New kinds of creativity are possible with activism, even for non-activist designers. This panel takes an unusual approach, and asks how ALL game designers might benefit from a peek into activism around games — including to invent new kinds of games. For this session, we will avoid the usual silos of activist games for their own sake, or pure activism around current games. Instead, we will ask how activism reveals new forms of gameplay, audience engagement, and genre bending. To do this, we will consider how each example game reveals an opportunity for new kinds of creativity.