- Jay Thakkar to decode how games can carry craft traditions, local stories and everyday life into immersive cultural experiences
- The Cartesian Room’s unique café lecture series blends scholarship with conversation and curiosity
- From Gujarat’s vernacular crafts to board-game storytelling — exploring how play can become a cultural archive
- Ahmedabad’s thinkers, designers and culture enthusiasts invited to rethink games beyond entertainment
NE FEATURES BUREAU
AHMEDABAD, MAR 16
In an age when games are often dismissed as mere entertainment, a thought-provoking lecture in Ahmedabad is set to challenge that perception by revealing how play can function as a powerful cultural knowledge system.
On March 21, renowned design educator Jay Thakkar will deliver a lecture titled “Beyond Entertainment: Games as Cultural Knowledge Systems”, exploring how storytelling and game design can translate everyday life, craft traditions and local narratives into engaging interactive experiences.
The session, hosted by the cultural initiative The Cartesian Room, will take place at Crimson Cup Cafe, turning a café into a vibrant space for intellectual exchange between scholars and curious citizens.
Where Storytelling Meets the Board Game
Games have always been part of human civilisation — from traditional village games to modern board games. Yet increasingly, designers and researchers are recognising that games can also preserve culture, transmit knowledge and tell stories.
Prof. Thakkar’s lecture will examine precisely this intersection — how play can transform cultural memory into interactive design.
By translating rituals, crafts, neighbourhood narratives and daily practices into game mechanics, designers can create experiences that are not only engaging but also educational and culturally rooted.
Such experiments are becoming an emerging field within design and cultural studies — where games function as living museums of culture rather than simple leisure activities.
A Scholar of Craft, Culture and Design
Prof. Jay Thakkar is a Senior Associate Professor at the Faculty of Design at CEPT University and a co-founder of the Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre (DICRC), an internationally recognised research hub documenting India’s craft traditions.
Over the years, he has worked extensively on vernacular architecture, traditional crafts and indigenous design systems, combining academic research with fieldwork across India and abroad.
His publications — including Naqsh, Matra, Prathaa and Sahaj — explore how traditional design knowledge embedded in everyday life can inform contemporary creativity.
Through his work at CEPT and DICRC, Thakkar has consistently argued that craft traditions and local knowledge systems must be understood not as relics of the past but as living sources of innovation.
Play as a Cultural Archive
The lecture will draw from experiments where games are used to translate cultural experiences into playable systems.
Imagine:
- A board game that narrates the journey of a traditional craft
- A strategy game based on the rhythms of a local marketplace
- A storytelling game inspired by folk narratives or neighbourhood histories
These playful formats, Thakkar suggests, can make cultural knowledge accessible to younger generations while encouraging collaboration and creativity.
Workshops and design experiments in this field have shown how participants can convert heritage narratives into prototypes using simple materials, turning culture itself into a game design language.
A Café as an Intellectual Salon
The event is part of The Cartesian Room’s innovative lecture series, which brings professors and thinkers out of formal auditoriums and into intimate café settings.
Each session blends a structured lecture with open conversation, allowing participants to engage directly with scholars and exchange ideas.
For Ahmedabad — a city known for its design institutions and vibrant cultural life — the format offers a refreshing alternative to conventional academic events.
Why Culture Lovers Should Attend
For designers, educators, students and cultural enthusiasts, the talk promises insights into:
- How games can document and communicate culture
- The role of design in preserving craft traditions
- New ways of transforming stories into interactive experiences
- The growing global interest in playful knowledge systems
In a city that prides itself on creativity and heritage, the lecture offers an invitation to rethink games not as distractions but as tools for cultural imagination.
Event Details
Lecture: Beyond Entertainment: Games as Cultural Knowledge Systems
Speaker: Prof. Jay Thakkar
Date: March 21 (Saturday)
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Venue: Crimson Cup Cafe
Entry: ₹500 (includes redeemable F&B coupon worth ₹250)
Seats are limited, and organisers say early registration is advisable.
In Ahmedabad this weekend, a board game may no longer be just a game — it might be a story, a craft tradition, or even a fragment of cultural memory waiting to be played.
