in partnership with The B-Bar
Plymouth Undokai: 2023
The Future Undokai Project is a groundbreaking Japanese initiative exploring the future of intergenerational community sports and how communities might design new multi-player physical games. And Plymouth is home to it’s UK & European premiere!
EVENTS
PLAY IT: JAPANESE STYLE GAMES 18 November - GET TICKETS
GET TICKETS
Join us for a day of traditional Undokai games at the
Saturday 18 November: 1-6pm
ARE YOU A PLAYER?
This event features games designed and led by the Japanese team from the Undokai Association that have been played by hundreds of thousands of people in Japan.
Games we'll play might be similar to a tug of war mixed with ball games, relay races, long rope jumping, centipede racing and more fun activities.
These 'Player' events are ideal for:
- People who want to have fun and play games
- People who like mixing with lots of different people
- People who really enjoy(ed) sports day at school
- People who like beach or park games
- Groups such as football clubs, scouts, guides, cubs, brownies, boys brigade, girls brigade, young carers, home school groups, Duke of Edinburgh, Ten Tors adventurers.
EVOLVE IT: Democratic Playful Games 24 Nov @Plymouth University - GET TICKETS
GET TICKETS
This one day conference is an opportunity to hear from 5 leading Japanese experts, whilst they are here in Plymouth and then experience the process for yourself as DeveloPlayers or participants.
Our Panels will explore the following themes:
Civic owned Events - city ownership of cultural identity (over multiple generations)
- What mechanisms do you need in place to enable a project to have a multigenerational life, purpose and validity?
- What are the complexities to be navigated between championing 400 years of tradition versus contemporary audience needs?
- How do you create space and systems for long term thinking?
- How do you balance costs versus commercialising and over advertising?
- In other words- how do you balance capacity and roots through time?
Democratic Games Design
- What happens if game design is a democratic process?
- What different types of experiences and activities materialise if owned by citizens?
- Can engagement in city-wide/ city led games lead to a new understanding of democracy?
- What are the best tools to achieve this?
Evolve-It
- What's the future of physical gaming?
- Will all our games be e-sports?
- Will STEM breakthroughs make us super human?
- Will we refuse to use technology and just play with physical objects?
DEVELOP IT: MAKE THE NEW PLYMOUTH STYLE GAMES 24 - 26 Nov @Plymouth Life Centre - GET TICKETS
GET TICKETS
Join us as a DeveloPlayer over 2.5 days as we co-create the new Plymouth Future Undokai games @Plymouth Life Centre.
This is your chance to event new games and rewrite the rule book! This is a seriously cool opportunity for you to design and create a new series of games with the Undokai Association team who are coming over from Japan to make these games with you.
Then on the final day we'll gather another 200+ people at the centre to play your games with you!
On Friday 24th 5pm - 10pm- The DeveloPlayers get to meet the team, try out lots of cool technology and start inventing new games for Plymouthians to play.
Sat 25th 10-6pm- our main DeveloPlayer day. Get stuck in and co-create 6-8 games for people of all ages and abilities to play the day after. It's a hackathon with a twist!
Sun 26th 10-6pm - Our final day of Plymouth Future Undokai - we'll have another 200+ people come together to play the games you've developed on Friday and Saturday (and you can join in to and show them how it's done!).
PLAY IT: PLYMOUTH STYLE GAMES 26 Nov @Plymouth Life Centre - GET TICKETS
GET TICKETS
Sunday 26th November 10am - 6pm, Plymouth Life Centre.
ARE YOU A PLAYER?
Get into teams and play the new games developed in our DeveloPlayer sessions - you’ll be the first ever players to try them out! It’s going to be so much fun and is as much about taking part than winning (although we will have medals and awards at the end of course!) There will be approx 6-8 games played across the day each lasting around 20 minutes. We can’t yet tell you what the games will be like (they don’t exist yet) but imagine a mash up of Takeshi’s Castle meets Taskmaster meets your school sports day and you might have a bit of an idea!
These 'Player' events are ideal for:
- people who like beach or park games, or their school sports day,
- families and friend groups looking for fun activities to do together,
- clubs / teams such as football clubs, scouts, guides, boys & girls brigade,
- home school groups,
- Duke of Edinburgh award teams,
- Ten Tors adventurers
- ... or anyone who is just up for a play!
ABOUT
Who it is for?
Plymouth Undokai in 2023 is the UK & European premiere of Future Undokai Project.
It is for anyone in Plymouth (aged from 8-88!) who has ever wanted to make a game for loads of people to play.
Was your childhood dream to take part in It’s A Knock Out? Do you watch Taskmaster or Takeishi’s Castle and think ’I’d love to have a go at that’? Then Undokai Plymouth is right up your street.
If you:
- Like a tug of war or sandcastle building race
- Enjoy making up silly games for friends and family
- Like an egg and spoon race
- Fancy watching some cheese rolling
- Like participating in events, but are not worried about winning
- Wish we could do more things that are silly and fun within our communities
- Want to hang out with people of all ages.
- Love Plymouth
- Love playing with cool technology.
At a Future Undokai all the games are made by people sharing ideas freely and working together over three days, before they are played en mass with a couple of hundred people.
The Plymouth Undokai project is all about bringing people together to have fun and play games. At the first events on the 18th November you’ll get to play traditional Undokai games - similar to what you might play at a school sports day, fair or carnival but with a twist and a bit of tech mixed in.
Then over the next weekend from 24-26th November we'll create and play brand new games just for Plymouth, which will then be played en-mass on Sunday 26th November by over 200 people!
All Plymouth Undokai events are Pay What You Decide (places bookable in advanced).
What is The Future Undokai?
Undokai is a Japanese community sports day. They are an important cultural activity in Japan that has run for over 150 years. Future Undokai adapts the traditional concept to meet today’s needs.
WATCH A FILM about Future Undokai (really explains it well!)
In Japan over 70k Undokais are held each year with more than 10m people of all ages taking part. It’s one of the most popular annual events in schools, local communities and often in companies and organisations.
The Future Undokai project is all about bringing people together and have fun co-creating new games, activities and events. (Which is exactly why we want to create one in Plymouth!)
The Future Undokai Project is a groundbreaking Japanese initiative exploring the future of intergenerational community sports and how communities might design new multi-player physical games. And Plymouth is home to it’s UK & European premiere!!!!
Help shape Plymouth Undokai 2023
If you want to get involved as a volunteer, sponsor or project partner for this year, or would like to make sure Plymouth Undokai can happen in 2024 and 2025 then we would love to hear from you: please email us on info@barbicantheatre.co.uk.
Produced in partnership with
