BOARD IN THE CITY
Co-founder and director Hayley Binstead looks back on the Southampton café’s first year and discusses how gaming can do good in the local community
Interview by Matt Jarvis
■ The café offers free entry before 4pm.
When did the Board in the City group begin?
The lightning bolt moment came when listening to Chris Evans talking to someone about a board game café. We’d already been doing gaming in the community for a while, using it in local schools as a therapy to help with social, emotional and behavioural barriers, and we were doing it for free. Listening to the show got us thinking that maybe this would help us with our work.
The original idea was to recruit volunteers to do more work in the community, for the café to be a hub with multiple groups reaching out into the community and coming back. We registered as a business in July ‘15 and opened in March 2016 – so we just celebrated our first birthday!