The Scientific Village Fete / 2016-17 / as part of Matheson Marcault

In The Scientific Village Fete, originally created for New Scientist Live in 2016, we reinvented simple fairground games, theming them around different aspects of science. How long can you keep a marble rolling around a gravitational simulation of the sun? Can you knock even Mercury and Venus off their stands in the Planet Shy, a twist on the traditional Coconut Shy?

The games were designed to bring visible activity and fun into the ExCeL Centre, which can be quite overwhelming; they were intended both to be fun and challenging in themselves, but also to create hubbub and a sense of visible enjoyment in the surrounding area.

Other collaborators: Saffron Parker (designed and built Space On Earth); George Buckenham (digital scoring for a fake food game); Hin Seng Lu (physical production for the same game); Mink Ette and Joe Ball (lead facilitators).

The Scientific Village Fete showed at New Scientist Live (London, 2016 and 2017), and a selection of the games showed at the Maker Extravaganza (Singapore, 2017).