BIRDS IN THE CITY
Bengaluru Edition

ABOUT THE GAME

The Bengaluru metropolis has been home to urban parks, botanical gardens and reserve forests at its periphery. However, the city has experienced some extreme changes in its landscape and environment over the years, which have also affected the urban wildlife it supports in both good and bad ways. Birds are one such example of wildlife that has coexisted in most urban landscapes alongside humans. Bengaluru still boasts of being a paradise for bird watching though the number and species of birds that one gets to see in and around the city has changed with time. We are designing a board game that attempts to capture this relationship between urbanization and its effects on avian biodiversity in the context of Bengaluru city.

Our game is a playful resource that will help develop a deeper understanding of not only identification and documentation of the current bird-life of Bengaluru but also help create awareness about the changing cityscape that affects the life-history of birds. Our audience are mainly young adults, but we also aim to keep it accessible to all residents of Bengaluru across different age groups. We envision the interactive format and across the table conversations prompted by the play experience of this game, to enable its players to learn about the challenges that an ever-changing urban environment creates for birds. We hope that the game will invoke curiosity and sensitize its players to the changes in their city and their impact on urban wildlife, making them more aware, empathetic and interested in the natural world around them.

This project has been funded as a part of Bengaluru Sustainability Forum’s Small Grants Programme. If you would like to know more about this game, do visit our blog where we are sharing our journey as we meet specific milestones.

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OUR TEAM

Game conceptualisation and design - Priti Bangal and Prasad Sandbhor

Visual design and illustrations - Nicole Elsa

Box cover art: Karunya Baskar

City events, bird profile research and blog writing - Anoushka Dasgupta

Website and experience design - Shashank Johri

Companion booklet - Tiara Aurora

Kannada translations - Aditi Rao

Kannada content review - Savitha Kumar

PLAYTESTERS

Aamodh Suresh, Aaroha Malagi, Aditi Rao, Akul Satish, Aniket Joshi, Anjali Ramesh, Anushka Wagh, Arshmeen Baveja, Ashwin Viswanathan, Bhanu Sridharan, Carlos Gonzalez-Diaz, Chaitanya Atre, Chaitanya Joshi, Charline Foch, Cristina Dobre, Dayani Chakravarthy, Francesca Foffano, Ganesh Sawant, Girish Krishnan, Ipsita Herlekar, Ishwar Sharma, Joe Kidd, John Terenzini, Jui Borgaonkar, Kanchan Vaidya, Lynda Dunlop, Maitreyee Mujumdar, Mala Patel, Manasi Pingle, Mandar Mahabal, Manek D’silva, Maria Turkenburg-Van, Mitali Shewade, Mittal Gala, Mouna Nagaraju, Mukta Watve, Mukund Krishna Kumar, Namrata Narendra, Nicole Elsa, Nishigandha Mahajan, Nivedita Birdawade, Pranav Mayekar, Pranav Sathish, Pranjal Wagh, Priya Bangal, Ramesh Sandbhor, Rapee Wanaset, Rita Deshpande, Sachin Mohite, Sahana Arunkumar, Saloni Gaikwad, Sayee Girdhari, Shashank Johri, Shubhankar Kamat, Smriti Safaya, Snehal Mahabal, Subhadra Devi, Supriya Rani, Surekha Sandbhor, Tanaya Apte, Tanvi Deshpande, Tiara Aurora, Uddipana Kalita, Varad Potnis, Zulfiya Hamzaki

UPDATES

We have played the game at the following venues so far - Nature Conservation Foundation, National Centre for Biological Sciences with the Bengaluru Sustainability Forum team, York Festival of Ideas, Science Gallery Bengaluru.
We received additional funding from Socratus Foundation, Bengaluru for the manufacturing of the game.
We have partnered with Gatha - Weaving a new Tale, a social impact venture by Vardhishnu Creations Private Limited which aims to provide sustainable and dignified livelihood to women from economically disadvantaged backgrounds for clothbags for the game components.
The game is currently being manufactured by Mohit Printers.
Birds in the City has inspired the design of another game about developing urban treescapes of York called Urban Labor-a-tree in collaboration with Joanne Morris, Stockholm Environment Institute York. The project is funded by York Environmental Sustainability Institute's (YESI) Fellows Discipline Hopping scheme.