Planting Seeds: A Game to Imagine Our Future Food Production

About

Can games, storytelling and creative collaboration help us imagine better futures for farming, nature and everyday life in Brighton and the South East?
If we want to build better futures, maybe we need to imagine them first? Too often, the future is imagined for us. Just take food: agriculture covers around 70% of the UK’s land, yet debates about the future of farming often feel distant to many of us.

This hands-on workshop for all ages explores the future of food in Brighton and the South East, drawing connections with housing and transport, energy, water, climate, and the wildlife that shares our streets and fields. Drawing on real challenges faced by local farmers — and cutting-edge research into the social and environmental impacts of new technologies — we’ll build our own futures together. Through storytelling, creativity, and collaborative play, we'll watch our decisions ripple through time.

Whether you’re curious about agroecology, suspicious of AI or delighted by it, or simply confused by the cost of a cheese sandwich nowadays, this will be a space for you. Come to explore food, forests, robots, sun, wind, worms, rain, and everyday life in the South East — today and tomorrow — and leave with a sense of possibility.

This event comes to you from Sussex Serious Play and the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) research programme.

Supported by Sussex Digitial Humanities Lab and BRAID Sustainable AI Futures

Workshops
Family
Sun 10 May, 12.30pm, 1.15pm & 2pm

£15, Concessions £10*

This event is taking place at Dice Saloon

A collaboration with Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex, the Festival of Ideas harnesses the transformative power of arts, culture, media and humanities to fashion new ways of thinking about the past, present and future.

University of Sussex: Festival of Ideas

*There is a £3.50 per order charge for all phone and online bookings (not applicable to Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival members)

**Stage timings are subject to change