The “DecidePub” project intends to decline the “Decide” format in a new way that can be played to discuss nutrition issues in informal, crowded and noisy environments like pubs, cafeterias or school canteens.
The main aim of the “DecidePub” format is to mix the casual, easy going approach of “pub games”, like darts and bingo, with the deliberative process at the basis of the original “Decide” game, in order to bring the players to reflect on controversial issues about food production, distribution and consumption and their ecological, sociological and economical impacts.
Moreover “DecidePub” wants to foster the above mentioned discussion in a moment of the day - the evening happy hour time, or other convivial moments - in which most of the people are well receptive to informal exchange of ideas, discussions and new stimuli.
The “DecidePub” format is based on a deck of cards similar to the standard “Decide” one, and on one or more mats of bigger dimensions (called “Decide Arazzos” because they are hung on a wall of the venue).
The “DecidePub” deck is composed of 4 story cards, 12 fact cards and 12 issue cards (half of a typical “Decide” deck).
Differently from the standard “Decide” deck each set of cards (story, fact and issue) is divided into two categories: A and B.
In this way, in the “DecidePub” deck there are 2 story cards A and 2 story cards B, 6 fact cards A and 6 fact cards B as well as 6 issue cards A and 6 issue cards B.
This categorization don’t appear on the cards but is kept secret by the organizers.
The “Decide Arazzo” is made of a big sheet (better if applied on a stiff surface, like a forex panel) divided into two identical areas clearly identified as area A and area B.
The categories A and B represent two different kind of food or beverages: local or imported, organic or not-organic and so on and so forth.
During the “DecidePub” event the pub-goers/players are offered with two samples of food or beverage, clearly marked as sample A and sample B.
Along with the food samples each participant is provided with six random cards from the “DecidePub” deck, avoiding that the same person receives two or more copies of the same card. The cards are marked by the facilitators with the name (and the first two letters of the surname, to avoid homonymy) of the participant that receives them.
The facilitators, while handing to the participants the samples and the cards, briefly explain that the objective of the game is to reflect and discuss on the proposed controversial issue (e.g. local wine against imported one, or industrial cheese against organic one) through the tasting of the two given samples, the reading of the six cards, the discussion with others and finally the vote, in which the tasting and the discussion have to be summarized in a decision about which card attains to which sample.
Participants to a "DecidePub" event have thus to: taste the two samples, read their own cards, discuss with friends and strangers about the information contained in their cards and in the cards of the others, decide which of their cards belongs to sample A and which to sample B and finally go to the “Decide Arazzo” and position their six cards in the area A or B, accordingly to their decision.
At the end of the event facilitators check if someone achieved to position all his/her cards in the right area of the Decide Arazzo and if so he/she is declared as a winner (reading the name written on the cards) and he/she will earn the prize that organizers chose for the event.
You can download the DecidePub cards (in Italian, 16MB) and the template for the "Arazzo" (the big scoring sheet, 6MB) from GoogleDocs.
The general outcome by now (one week after the pilot event) is a shared sense of “good work” among the partners that surely enforces the newborn network among MTSN, SF and FEM. Moreover other department of MTSN asked us about the possibility to use the format in future events, the same happened in FEM for a possible use at the researcher’s night partner event and to SF to do another similar event using the same material and/or expand the format to other food and to make circulate among other SF convivia in Italy and possibly at international level.
We love the idea of other people trying the DecidePub format: we advise them to put special care in the texts that should be informative but also mind stimulating and easy to read in a chaotic environment. The images chosen and the graphic layout proved to be very important to focus the attention of the people. The idea to print the cards on sticker paper proved to be very effective to hurry up the card positioning phase.
It is important to have all the participants registered on a sheet when handling them the cards to hurry up the scrutiny phase at the end of the game, for the same reason is important to have a print of the solutions at hand and to be in at least four people to search for winners. Probably the process of sorting out the winners could be made faster using a spreadsheet and a laptop.
FUND is a project funded by the European Commission (