Introducing The Policy Quest
Design impactful policy campaigns with our Policy Quest board game.
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Our innovative board game is designed to help you achieve policy impact, taking you step-by-step through building your policy campaign.
Whether you are an individual academic wanting to use your research to inform policy or a team of policy-engaged professionals seeking to influence decision-making, our facilitated Policy Quest sessions can support you in designing creative and effective campaigns to achieve policy impact.
Using our nine policy ideation decks and two campaign builder boards, our sessions will guide you through the campaign development process covering areas such as, conceptualisation, stakeholder mapping, resource management, campaign milestones and risk mitigation. At the end of the session, you will take away a full campaign impact plan informed by your decisions during the session.
Policy Quest was inspired by our policy cards project developed as part of a CAPE (Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement) funded academic project. Headed by Steve Benford and Steven Meek, and delivered by Hanne Wagner and the Institute for Policy and Engagement, the project sought to explore how to gamify the process of creating policy impact campaigns using card ideation to improve the quality of policy engagement plans. The tool was designed to help academics think creatively about how to engage policy makers with their research.
We often hear that people want to engage with policy but don’t know where to start or how to make their work relevant in that space. Policy Quest was developed in response to that need. It offers a structured yet flexible environment where players can explore policy engagement in a hands-on way.
We decided to take this a step further by creating a fully-fledged, facilitated game called The Policy Quest, which was enhanced to support anyone looking to influence and engage policy in their work. As part of the game, players are encouraged to explore different stakeholders, policy audiences, approaches and materials that could be used to execute a successful policy campaign and use this as a base for creating an impact plan.
Who is the Policy Quest for?
Researchers and academics looking to turn research findings into real-world policy impact, regardless of prior experience with policy engagement.
Charities and non-profit organisations aiming to plan, strengthen, and deliver campaigns that lobby for meaningful policy change in their sector or community.
Campaigners and advocates who want a structured way to think through campaign design, strategy and influence, whether they are just starting out or already experienced.
Businesses, think tanks and public affairs teams who want support in creating achievable, measurable policy impact.
How do the sessions work?
- Each session is designed to work with a wide range of audiences and is supported with a level of bespoke facilitation tailored to participants’ needs.
- Ahead of the session, you will discuss your requirements with the lead facilitator, who will create a bespoke session plan for you and your team.
- Sessions can be run for teams working on the same campaign project or for groups of up to 60 participants developing separate campaign ideas.
- The number of participants and the level of specialist knowledge required will determine how many facilitators are involved and whether the session runs as a half-day or full-day workshop.
- Before the session, participants complete a short survey covering their policy experience, campaign ideas, and learning goals, allowing facilitators to further tailor the session and bring in subject specialists where needed.
During the session, we will take your team through five facilitated stages of policy campaign development
Stage one:
Refining the concept
Players are taken through structured questions to understand what their campaign is trying to influence, why the change or prevention of a change is necessary and how they will know if their campaign has been successful.
Stage two:
Identifying your stakeholders
This stage is designed to support players in narrowing down what level of decision makers, target policy audience and campaign partners can influence and enact the campaign's outcomes.
Stage three:
Selecting resources
This stage makes players consider in detail what resources will be required for a successful and enhanced campaign delivery.
Stage four:
Choosing the approach
Players are encouraged to think outside of the box about the activities they may do and materials they may produce to engage their audence and achieve their campaigns.
Stage five:
Testing the campaign
This stage is designed to identify gaps and vulnerabilities within the campaign, challenging their campaign's robustness and encouraging players to reflect on their campaign design to improve agility and flexibility.
We have tested The Policy Quest with over 100 players from a range of backgrounds, and here is what they said:
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100% of those surveyed felt their campaign was more robust as a result of the session
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100% of those surveyed felt the session helped them to find the route aims of their campaign
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75% of those surveyed felt they better understood the policy context for their campaign as a result of the session