How Many Things to Build the Future?
2016–presentHow Many Things to Build the Future is a collaborative game for small groups that uses simple rules to think together through abstract ideas. Players work with a limited set of objects and instructions to explore concepts such as the future, freedom, or thought through physical arrangement rather than discussion alone.
The game is played by two or more people, usually in groups of up to five or six. Cards are used to select an abstract word and to set conditions for how the group works together, such as working in silence or treating the task as a dance. The rules are deliberately open, requiring players to negotiate uncertainty collectively rather than resolve it quickly.
Across several rounds, participants arrange some or all of the objects in response to the prompt. Meaning emerges through handling, placing, adjusting, and responding to each other’s choices. The activity produces physical and verbal conversations about ideas that are often treated as fixed or abstract.
The game has been used in a range of contexts, including workshops, classrooms, festivals, performances, and conferences. Its structure allows it to function as a creative warm-up, a devising tool, a facilitated group activity, or an alternative form of discussion, depending on where and how it is played.
Rather than offering conclusions, How Many Things to Build the Future treats thinking as something that happens through shared action. By limiting materials and instructions, the game creates space for new meanings to form through collective play.
How Many Bricks to Build the Future?
2024. Performance [Lambeth Fringe]; University College London [The Anthropology of Play: Encounters and Emergences]; Riverside studios [Odyssey of Oddities]
How Many Chairs to Build the Future?
2022. Somerset House, London [Now Play This]
Metaform
2021. Installation. Waltham Forest [Jump Fest]
Metaform
2020. Installation. Wellcome Collection, London [Play Well]
Metaform
2019. Presentation. Mansions of the Future, Lincoln [inDialogue 2019]