ICOS Cities explored how live action role play can be a tool in developing data services for city policymakers.
ICOS Cities is an ICOS-coordinated project that develops ways to measure, calculate, model, store and visualise climate related data since 2021. One of the project partners, Aalto University Sustainable Design Research Group NODUS, is working on service concepts based on the project data. They have benchmarked the current climate data service field and gathered stakeholder workshop data from several European cities such as Zurich, Paris, Barcelona and Munich.
Recently, they organised a live action role-play session to engage with Helsinki urban stakeholders.
The participants were given roles different from their everyday work life to gain new perspectives in the discussions. The roles varied from biodiversity, law, design and leadership experts coming from different companies and city departments. The facilitators skilfully helped the participants adapting to their roles.
The scenes were loosely scripted with general backdrops in the framework of aiming to make Helsinki city the ‘World Carbon Neutral Capital’ of 2035. The first scene was a project meeting, set in the present day. The project co-designer presented actual dashboard concepts developed by NODUS in the ICOS Cities project and the group discussed their possible uses and the needs for complementary data.
The second scene happened two years after. Helsinki had achieved the goal of becoming the World Carbon Neutral Capital and the dashboard had been developed into a live tool. The group celebrated the success of the project discussing the further possibilities of the dashboard and different ways to collaborate further with different parts of the city and its stakeholders. The organisers had created a real celebratory atmosphere with actual sparkling drinks and chocolate cake.
The third and final scene was an unofficial meeting following the celebration, where the characters shared their concerns and everyday challenges, and made plans to make the World Carbon Neutral Capital year truly transformative for Helsinki.
The participants had positive vibes after the workshop and would have been ready to continue playing even further to utilise all aspects of their roles and exploit the additional benefits of the method. Still, there were many take home learnings mentioned in the debrief discussion. Adapting to a well-defined character in the discussion makes it easier to speak up and further your own agenda. It takes a lot of brain work to learn the role and stay in it, but it is also rewarding to succeed in the play.
We are very eager to see the results of this workshop, and we will make sure you will hear about them too! The ICOS Cities project ends 31 December 2025, but the dissemination activities continue in 2026.
Find out more about the ICOS Cities project here.
NODUS’ Doctoral Researcher Tommi Vasko designed and conducted this workshop with his Aalto University colleagues. The workshop participants were stakeholders from the environmental consultant company Sitowise, Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY, Helsinki City, Aalto University and ICOS ERIC.