Gaming health

To bring in the new year, we welcomed Jasmine Hide to the team as LHSA Archives Cataloguer. For the next two years, Jasmine will be working through our uncatalogued holdings, creating more detailed descriptions so that users can access even more fascinating sources about health in the Lothians! In this blog, Jasmine introduces a very colourful new collection....

My name is Jasmine Hide and I am the new Archives Cataloguer with Lothian Health Services Archive. As a new member of the LHSA team, one of the first collections I catalogued was a small collection of  material relating to public health, especially sexual health and HIV.

This collection is a wonderful insight into the various initiatives undertaken to encourage conversations about safe sex among a wide range of audiences, especially locally to Edinburgh. It represents a spectrum of ways to initiate discussions about sexual health, from a series of comics produced by the Lifeline project in Manchester to the minutes of a conference on women’s experiences with HIV and AIDS.

One of the most interesting areas of collecting within this material is a series of games designed to educate participants on the facts about HIV and AIDS. These games aimed to challenge prejudice and misinformation about the transmission of HIV and the social stigma attached to a diagnosis....

Opinions

Designed by Riverside Health Education Service and Hammersmith and Fulham Youth Service, ‘Opinions’ is a game where participants select cards with statements, and sort them into categories depending on whether the group agrees or disagrees. A sample of the kind of statements provided can be seen in the pictures below. The game is designed to promote discussion, and an accompanying booklet provides some factual information regarding each statement for a facilitator to discuss with players.

Above and below: Opinions board, card, and instructions (GD1/154/5/1)

Choices

Choices is a board game designed by Lothian Regional Council Community Education Service in much the same vein. 200 copies were distributed to schools, youth clubs, community education centres and residential settings for young people.

Players roll a die and select a card according to the colour of the space they have landed on. The player then tries to answer the question on their card. An accompanying booklet provides detailed answers for a facilitator and some factual responses to the questions, though not all are simple true or false questions. Again, the questions asked in Choices are designed to challenge stereotypes and prejudices by correcting misinformation and encouraging open discussion.

You can read more about the Take Care campaign in a previous blog post here.

Above and below: Choices board, instructions, and question cards