Levelling Up Climate Justice: GenCGov’s Climate Stack Game Takes the Stage at the Bradford Impact Festival
There is a distinct kind of magic that happens when you stop lecturing people about climate change and start asking them to play with it instead. It strips away the overwhelming jargon, dismantles the fatigue, and replaces it with something far more powerful. Something that stimulates curiosity, collaboration, and a shared drive to win. That was the energy pulsating through the Theatre in the Mill at the University of Bradford during the Bradford Impact Festival 2026, where GenCGov took the stage to prove that the future of climate governance might just begin with a game.
The festival itself was a vibrant, full-day celebration of the profound ways research and culture intersect, specifically highlighting the University of Bradford’s massive contributions to the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. It was an event designed to showcase how academic rigor, when fused with creative methodologies, can spark deeply meaningful changes in perception. And right in the heart of this creative collision was GenCGov, proudly represented by Dr. Pedi Obani, who took to the panel alongside Dr. Sudhir Selvaraj to explore a concept that is quietly revolutionizing how we talk about the environment: making a game out of research.
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The Power of the Climate Stack
GenCGov did not attend this year’s festival empty-handed. We brought with us the Climate Stack, a beautifully co-designed climate justice game that represents months of deep, intentional collaboration. This was not a project built in the isolation of a laboratory. It was forged in the real world, developed in close partnership with the National Science and Media Museum, the brilliant minds at Impact Gamers, and the vibrant, insightful BD3 community.
Impact Gamers, a Bradford-based community interest company dedicated to inspiring young people to move from simply playing games to actively making them, proved to be the perfect creative anchor for this initiative. Together, we set out to answer a complex question: how do we take the heavy, often abstract realities of climate change and translate them into an engaging experience that resonates with a new audience? The answer was Climate Stack, a game that invites players to physically and intellectually engage with the delicate, interconnected balance of climate justice, environmental resilience, and community action.
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When Gen Z Takes the Lead
The true heartbeat of our presence at the festival, however, was not just the game itself. It was the people who brought it to life. Watching attendees stop by our exhibition stand to chat, engage, and play was profoundly rewarding. They did not just play the game; they owned the narrative. They navigated the complex scenarios of Climate Stack with an intuitive understanding of the stakes, proving that when you provide people with the right tools, tools that speak their language and respect their intelligence, they will not only engage with the climate science, but they will master it. Their participation was a vivid reminder that climate justice cannot be a top-down mandate. It must be a collaborative, intergenerational effort where the voices, creativity, and digital fluency are placed at the absolute forefront.
Changing Perceptions Through Play
Dr. Pedi Obani’s presentation during the “Making a Game out of Research” session struck at the core of why this approach matters so deeply. Games possess a unique, disarming ability to translate dense research into an accessible format. They lower the barriers to entry, inviting people who might normally shy away from a traditional climate lecture to sit down, strategize, and learn through doing.
When a player interacts with Climate Stack, they are not just moving pieces or pressing buttons; they are actively simulating the difficult choices and trade-offs required to build a sustainable future. They are experiencing, in real-time, how climate change affects different communities differently, and how promoting climate justice requires strategy, empathy, and collective action. This is how you stimulate a deeply meaningful change in perception, not by telling people what to think, but by giving them the space to discover it for themselves.
A Blueprint for the Future
Our experience at the Bradford Impact Festival 2026 was more than just a successful exhibition; it was a validation of GenCGov’s core philosophy. We believe that if we are going to tackle the greatest existential threat of our time, we must be willing to innovate how we communicate it. The success of Climate Stack proves that when you combine the technical expertise of researchers with the creative vision of organisations like Impact Gamers and the lived experiences of communities like BD3, you create something that transcends traditional academia.
We left Bradford Impact Festival deeply inspired, carrying with us the energy of every person who stopped by our stand, asked a question, and picked up the dices to play the Climate Stack Game. A heartfelt thank you goes out to the University of Bradford, the festival organizers, our incredible partners, and every single player who joined us. The game is far from over, but if the engagement we saw from the attendees and the wider Bradford community is any indication, we are finally playing to win.
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