As part of the public programme of Miguel Martin’s exhibition Up and Down, artist David Blandy will be in-conversation with Miguel before hosting Gathering Storm, a role-playing game exploring the impacts of colonial food production and opening a space for collective storytelling.

For the past few years, David has been experimenting with the form of group worlding; using voice, writing and drawing to imagine new worlds and societal systems collaboratively.

In Gathering Storm, the game guides the players through adding elements to a map, imagining a postcolonial sci-fi world and then creating a set of characters to inhabit this space, using a streamlined card-based system. Through a series of prompts, players come to terms with hidden histories and present injustices.

Gathering Storm is a participatory event which involves complex themes, narratives and storytelling. No previous experience of tabletop gaming is necessary to play.

Gathering Storm was developed at Delfina Foundation's Politics of Food programme in association with Gaia Art Foundation in 2022. The card game edition was commissioned by Esker Foundation, Canada in 2024 for the exhibition Constellations: Racial myths, land, and labour, Curated by Su-Ying Lee.

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There are no attendee limits for the in-conversation, but places are limited to 16 for the game - please email sam@devonshirecollective.co.uk specifying if you'd like to attend both the conversation and game, or just the conversation.