You might have horror stories, or genuine trauma, from a childhood playing Monopoly with adults gleeful at your demise, or having Uncle Jeremy flip the table when he landed on someone else’s hotel. You might have been forced to play Scrabble and sit their feeling bored and stupid because you couldn’t find and words in your letters.

Luckily, for most people, gaming is a place for connection and communication. It’s about meeting people, stretching and challenging our problem solving abilities, and creating memories while building relationship – and we want to share that with you, to see if any of our work connects to any of your work.

People’s Meeples is a not for profit CIC dedicated to using games for all their social and educational benefit. We’re sponsored by Gamers@Hart, and we’ve received funding from the NHS, Hartlpool Borough Coucil, and other local funders. We also run some paid-for services, including after school clubs.

We were founded in 2018, and we started by running autism friendly events with Catcote Academy before the pandemic, then during the lockdown we provided literacy game bundles to local families and ran virtual ‘learn to play’ evenings. After the pandemic, we received the funding to run hugely successful games nights to get people socialising again and reduce the loneliness epidemic that had developed.

But what do we mean by the ‘social and educational benefit’ of gaming, and how can we work together?

Rather than try to explain, we’d love to invite you to our open day on 14th September from 12pm to 6pm – drop in at any point, for any length of time. We’ll show you some of our most popular games, give you a mini D&D demo, and help to find points of contact between your work and our interests, to see if we can develop collaborations! We’re also running a special introduction to games in our library for home schoolers from 10am to 2pm on Friday 15th September.

Perhaps you’re working with people looking to develop their IT and people management skills? We can work with volunteers to develop their skills in leading tournaments and game nights. Perhaps you’re working with people who are looking to socialise but are anxious about having to make ‘small talk’, games are ideal because the table becomes the centre of the conversation rather than the weather. Maybe you have people looking for a wholesome community to belong to – we can provide that too, with friendships just waiting to be formed.

Maybe you’re interested in other employability skills or practising academic skills, games can be a great way to develop confidence in literacy, numeracy, problem solving, and more.

So come along on 14^th September and we’ll show you what games can offer, and look forward to working together.

Find us in Bovis House
Victoria road, above LilyAnne’s Wellbing Cafe, opposite Loons.

People’s Meeples is run by a group of directors with a passion for gaming, and experience in education, training, community and youth work, and occupational therapy.