Touching on a wide range of issues and methods covering multiple disciplines, the Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) 2024 has rapidly become one of the centrepieces in the Arctic research calendar. Demonstrating the expanding interest and reach of Arctic research, ASSW 2024 was hosted in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh.

Many of the Arctic focused EU Horizon 2020 research projects had a presence at ASSW and gathered around the EU Polar cluster session. Following some interesting exchanges over the past year, ArcticHubs and sister project Arctic Passion have been prominent in bringing feedback that relates to ‘stakeholder fatigue’ across our collaborative research activities. Notably we have moved to outline some of the limitations when research has to closely follow the project cycle, creating a stop start rhythm that can stymie continuity and the long-term building of trust between researchers and Arctic communities.

ArcticHubs also took advantage of the busy event to take part in discussions covering a variety of topics that are resonating with our project.

Prominent amongst these, we couldn’t help but notice the growing interest and diverse applications around Arctic communities who are developing different ‘serious games’. We spoke with colleagues from Greenland, Scotland and Japan, to hear how collaboratively designed board games have been emerging. The games design process has connected different age groups, subject or research matters and ways of engaging. ArcticHubs very own digital game showcasing hub experiences of reindeer herding communities, fits into this suite of co-produced initiatives that seek to embed and share research directly from the Arctic region.

Youth from Uummannaq, Greenland lift the ASSW audience in Edinburgh

The different Arctic themed serious games all emerge through individual projects, but until now appear to float within a loose archipelago of ideas that have few opportunities to connect and collectively share.

As part of ArcticHubs ‘exploitation’ or efforts to sustain its research outputs beyond the project cycle, we are moving to shift this situation. After the formal end of ArcticHubs project work this summer, a number of workshop events are being planned alongside Arctic researchers based in Japan. These will look across different serious game designs to consider in more detail the process and methods adopted, particularly drawing from the participatory approach used to bring ArcticHubs research to life in digital game form.

The ArcticHubs website will remain active during this period, so if you have an interest in seeing how our different outputs and tools evolve, please continue to check in at https://projects.luke.fi/arctichubs/