Home - Workshop rooted in African Ubuntu

Co-Creating Sustainable Futures Through Play

A cooperative, image-based workshop that helps teams shape sustainable and desirable futures.

WHAT IS UBUNTU CHESS

Ubuntu Chess is a playful, hands-on workshop method for collective future-crafting.

Using a curated archive of images, character selection, and guided dialogue, participants explore complex challenges together and build a co-created vision of the future.
The process emphasises interdependence, empathy, and cooperation, inviting teams to move beyond business-as-usual and imagine new pathways for transition.

Ubuntu Chess sits at the intersection of:
Playful facilitation
Systems thinking
Collective meaning-making
Transition design
Embodied practice
Futures literacy

It is a Future Lab — an invitation to explore, negotiate, and design futures collaboratively.

Participants take turns selecting images from a collective archive. Each move invites dialogue, interpretation, negotiation, and alignment. Through this iterative process, the group co-creates a visual collage — a shared narrative of a desirable future.

What happens in a session:
Break open the status quo
Re-imagine desirable futures together
Practise empathy, dialogue, and consensus
Explore roles, responsibilities & connection
Generate pathways and transition routes
Prototype tangible ideas and next steps

The outcome is not a single winner, but a
co-created landscape of possibility that belongs to the whole group.

HOW IT WORKS

A highly participatory, image-driven process for shaping shared futures.

Ready to explore what your team could build together?

Contact Me To Book Your Workshop

WHY IT MATTER: IMPACT & OUTCOME

Ubuntu Chess creates meaningful, actionable transformation.

Through dialogue, embodied practice, shared storytelling, and collaborative world-building, teams develop:

A shared understanding of the issue through multiple perspectives
A co-created vision of a sustainable, desirable future
Collectively generated pathways for transition
Concrete solution ideas & prototypes
Agreed next steps, milestones, and commitments
Strengthened trust, collaboration, and collective agency
Embodied tools for future crafting that anchor imagination in lived experience

Ubuntu Chess helps teams rehearse the futures they want — not in theory, but in community.

Not a Game You Win

Ubuntu Chess is NOT a competitive game.
It’s a collective world-building practice.
Guided by Ubuntu — “I am because we are” — the workshop emphasises interdependence over individual victory.
I can only win if we all win.

Suitable For:

• NGOs & cultural institutions
• Social impact teams
• Corporate innovation units
• Community groups
• Educational programmes
• Research organisations

Themes explored in the workshops:
• Interdisciplinary or intercultural teams
• Team cohesion & collaborative leadership
• Systems thinking & transition design
• Community engagement & dialogue
• Creativity, imagination & futures literacy
• Learning, conflict navigation & collective decision-making

If your team is shaping futures, navigating change, or imagining new ways forward — Ubuntu Chess is for you.

WHO IS IT FOR

Ubuntu Chess is ideal for organisations exploring new, generative ways of thinking, learning, and creating together.

Format

Half-Day Workshop

Includes:

Preparation & issue framing
3-hour Ubuntu Chess session
All materials
Documentation & tailored transition report
Drinks & organic snacks
Up to 15 participants (in-house at client site)

Full-Day Workshop

Includes everything in the Half-Day Package, plus:

Extended embodied practices
Deep visioning sessions
Pathway generation
Prototyping + actionable transition steps
Comprehensive documentation & report
Breaks & lunch period
Up to 15 participants (in-house at client site)
For groups larger than 15, two facilitators will be used.

Pilot / Intro Tier (Limited Spots)

Includes:

3-hour facilitated session
All materials
Documentation + summary
Short feedback exchange

What It Looks Like

A glimpse into the Ubuntu Chess experience

About the Author

Ubuntu Chess was created by
Vipua Rukambe-Schmidt, a practitioner working at the intersection of playful cosmology, transition design, and collective futures.
Her work explores how play, imagination, embodiment, and dialogue help communities navigate complexity and build sustainable pathways forward.
Driven by the philosophy of Ubuntu — “I am because we are” — Vipua designs transformative spaces where teams experiment, learn, and craft futures grounded in care, connection, and shared agency.

Ready to explore what your team could imagine — and build — together?