Players 2+ players | Time 1 hour | Ages Ages 6+

solarpunk: an emerging movement which envisions a regenerative future interconnected with community and nature.

solarpunk pen pals: a collaborative storytelling activity where you imagine a solarpunk world, create a character in it, then write a letter as your character.

Intro

In pairs of two you will be guided through a process of collaborative worldbuilding and character creation similar to preparing for a roleplaying game. In fact, the prompt cards are borrowed from an RPG, Solarpunk Futures. However, in this activity, instead of playing a game with your characters, your characters will write each other letters updating one another on their lives within their solarpunk world.

Seacliff Community Garden by Taylor Seamount

Setup

  1. Print the cards (1 copy) and character sheets (1 copy per 2 players). Optional: Print a hardcopy of the instructions.
  2. Gather a pen or pencil for each player
  3. Form pairs of 2

Phase 1: Worldbuilding

Setting the scene: We will be imagining our world 20 years in the future. The solarpunk transition has critical momentum – people are actively building the better and dismantling the bad.

As a pair:

  1. Pull a Challenge Card and a Tool Card.
  2. Take 5 minute turns riffing on how your Challenge might be met with your Tool.

Tip: Talk together and let your imagination run free If at first your Challenge and Tool seem unrelated, just try your best and see where your imagination takes you. Discuss how your visions interrelate in the future you’re co-imagining. You don’t have to be an expert - go on a flight of fancy!

Tip: Get specific applying these to your familiar communities and locales. For instance you can start with “Parking lots are replaced with gardens” but then take the next step to say “the parking lot behind Trader Joe’s is being converted to a community garden by…”

Phase 2: Character Creation

Individually:

  1. Take a Character Sheet.
  2. Pull a Value Card and Role Card. Write these down on your character sheet as your character’s “Motivating Value” and “Movement Role”.
  3. Using your value and role as inspiration, fill out the rest of your character sheet.

Phase 3: Relationship Building

As a pair:

  1. Introduce each other to your characters.
  2. Decide how your characters know each other and why they are in correspondence.
  3. Write a letter from your character to your partner’s, drawing from the worldbuilding and character creation you’ve done together. Feel free to leave out whatever doesn’t feel relevant. Don’t consult each other while writing.
  4. Read each other your letters.

Conclusion: Sharing

As a whole group: Share the letters you have written. If it’s a large group, be mindful to keep the backstory to a minimum.

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🌳 ☀️ 🌱

Archives

  • Some stories from the community to provide inspiration:

    Name: Bjornelius Carpelton III (He/They)

    Age: 69 (for the past 5 years)

    Movement Role: Elder

    Motivating Value: Beauty

    Living situation: Lives in a treehouse with a lotus-shaped mast. The tree is a trellus for a strawberry bush wine network.

    Notable quirk: Often holds up fingers in the shape of a frame and gazes for minutes at the scenery until eventually smiling and softly saying "ah."

    Hobby: Audiovisual baths

    Fav way to relax: When the sunlight is golden, placing an array of crystals from the branches such that the light refracts on a clearing. Then placing sound objects around and creating beautiful sounds amidst the twinkles with a friend.

    What they did last Tuesday in their role: Organized a communal art-making gathering about time. Changemakers from around town came to make art expressing the flow of change and the emotions evoked. This was then attached to issues in the zeitgeist and presented at the local farmers market.

    Letter to their friend:

    To the Indemmitable Penny G,

    I came across the most magnificent faucet last Tuesday amidst my weekly timemorate gathering, and couldn't help but be reminded of you, your equisite faucet collection and what you do for 70% of our posterity, the percentage of us that is made of WATER! HAH! Oh don't mind me and my grandparently humor. How the old world of science shows on cable TV. Remember back when we all spent a chunk of our lives, a chunk of TIME focused on a little black box? Now that our intention (the one you and I created, where beauty, advocacy, information and social connection is gamified through intentional exercsises for all at the daily locals Market) is widespread across our watershed, science jokes are born in the community, rather than aroudn the producer's table. Oh how I miss the days of our madly intnetional dreaming and madly love-filled soundbaths amidst the trees. Let's get together and create again, my friend. These old bones haven't stopped me from expanding the soundbath to include refractive prisms you would love! And hey, now I am in need of a new faucet soon. See you in our dreams ❤️.

    Love, Bjornelius Carpelton III

  • Name: Aviarian (She/They)

    Age: 40

    Movement Role: Supporter / Motivator

    Motivating Value: Nourishment of body and soul

    Living situation: Treehouse camp

    Notable quirk: Dancing into spaces, singing their words randomly.

    Hobby: Nature-influenced dancing and modeling. Guerilla gardening.

    Fav way to relax: Napping in moss and observing & identifying creatures in the duff.

    What they did last Tuesday in their role: Led a guerilla gardening and landscaping workshop.

    Letter to their friend:

    Hey Jesus!

    It was so nice meeting you at the Santa Cruz Annual Seed Convention. I hope the lupine seeds are serving your project well. May teir roots tangle with your riparian ecosystem to make supportive soil.

    Your cosmic citrus seeds have sprouted and are now a good foot tall. I'm excited to try their fruit in the future. Is it true that they can produce fruit in only a year? That seems... unnatural. Almost uncomfortably so. I'm trying to analyze why this feeling stays with me. I think in the past, the length of time I spend with a tree and see its growth makes it feel special. Not in a big dopamine rush of instant gratification, but in the way a relationship with a very old and stable friend feels.

    I also see, however, how beneficial these fast-growing fruit trees can be for people. I think in unison with other food growing plants of vary abilities, we can make healthy ecosystems that benefit the environment and people.

    I would love to collaborate with you with this in mind. I knkow you mentioned you work at a hospital. Would you be interested in collaborating on a food garden for sick and disabled people?

    Sincerely, Aviarian 🎶🌱

  • Name: Jesus Cardenas (He/Him)

    Age: 29

    Movement Role: Agrocine Corps

    Motivating Value: Curiosity

    Living situation: Lives in a greenhouse

    Notable quirk: An airhead and jokster when not working

    Hobby: Skiing

    Fav way to relax: Watching clouds roil through the mountain tops.

    What they did last Tuesday in their role: Farmed genetically modified crops to help stabilize an eroding river bank.

    Letter to their friend:

    What's up, Avarian!

    That theory your provided was radical, I appreciate that seed perspecctive. That'll help me refine my model on seed difussion across regions. It's cool to think about how we can map Agro seed highways (spread of seeds). Allergies suck - people should be able to experience nature without constantly sneezing! Boo allergies.

    Let's guerilla seed bomb sometime!

    Best, Jesus Cardenas

  • Name: Cryptid Jack (thi/thim)

    Age: 42

    Movement Role: Imaginator

    Motivating Value: Truth

    Living situation: Lives in a cabin outside an artists’ collective house by the sea near Davenport.

    Notable quirk: Only eats the most bland foods.

    Hobby: Creating animal costumes from found materials.

    Fav way to relax: Watch vintage kids’ cartoons

    What they did last Tuesday in their role: Costumed performance art speaking as different animals making their needs known in the community. Speaks in riddles, jokes, slapstick humor, paradox, song, poetry, and scientific data. Advised by ecologists and scientists. Loosely transmutes the information in ways that frustrate scientist collaborators but his unsubstantiated rants are sometimes prophetic.

    Letter to their friend:

    Dear Cat,

    Thank you so much for hosting that salon at Sparkle Paint House! I’m afraid my rendition of that horny golden crowned sparrow may have disrupted the gentle atmosphere. Next time if you’d like a more grounded performance from me, maybe schedule it for late summer after nesting season.

    Folks around here could really use a reminder of conviviality right now. Some people are mistrustful of the rapid scaling of the transformative justice system in response to the new flue spreading in the jails. Of course there will be some bumps, but maybe if the Demigod of Friendliness and Good Tea can cast a good vibes spell over the community we can agree to give each other more grace.

    Doo-Da-DOO-Dooooo (golden crowned sparrow call),

    Cryptid Jack

  • Name: Tyler (he/him)

    Age: 27

    Movement Role: Hacker

    Motivating Value: Community

    Living situation: Works for a newspaper; acts essentially as a campaign finance and political corruption watchdog

    Notable quirk: Massive sticker collection on laptop

    Hobby: Volunteering at bike repair co-op.

    Fav way to relax: Cycling

    What they did last Tuesday in their role: Researched recent luxury trip a political leader took to determine if any gifts/trip expenses were improperly/illegally exchanged.

    Letter to their friend:

    Hey Cuz!

    I hope everything’s ok down in Aptos. Thank you again for keeping me and the rest of the fam up to date on Anita’s condition and treatments and how we can support her and you. You have been such an incredible partner to her, and I’m so happy and grateful to have you as part of our family.

    Things are going pretty well with me. Work’s been keeping me busy for sure. There’s been some big dark web activity happening surroundign the upcoming NeoJeffersonian Party convention that my paper has been investigating. One of my co-workers just published a big expose about it last week. You might have seen it on the local bulletin.

    Besides that I’ve been training for my third Seattle to Portland bike ride which I’m super excited for. Next time you’re in Seattle (and Anita if she’s recovered more), let me know if you’d like tme to set up up with a bike and would like to go on some local rides. I think it’s such a wonderful way to explore a city.

    How’s life/work/everythign treating you on your end? What have you been reading recently? I’m so excited to come visit our 4th of July week. Let me know if there’s any party things I should reserve from the library ahead of time. Happy to help however I can.

    Much love, Tyler

  • Name: Hally (she/her)

    Age: 28

    Movement Role: Builder

    Motivating Value: Ingenuity

    Living situation: Tiny home on family complex

    Notable quirk: Collects exotic bulb plants

    Fav way to relax: Reading in a hammock

    What they did last Tuesday in their role: Subdivided a large open concept home for energy efficiency and communal living.

    Letter to their friend:

    Hey Tyler. Hope you’re well and enjoyed the Equinox. Anita and I send our gratitude for the turkeytail tincture. Anita says the turkeytail here just doesn’t have the same potency as the Cascadia varieties.

    She’s doing better but it’s of course a slow recovery. She’s been taking short walks in the garden and even made it down to the naighborhood barn breakfast on Sunday (riding the golf cart of course). But it says a lot that she was able to enjoy all the commotion. She wants everyone to know she sends her love and will be up for a video call soon. You all know how she likes her quiet. She wants news on her nibblings in the meantime tho.

    My work in the naighborhood has been really dynamic lately. The Butes have decided to finally subdivide their cavernous home and it’s been an interesting challenge. It’s basically just a giant box with rooms around the edge of the first and second floors. They want to be able to cool it better this summer and also make space for Jenny’s nibbling to move in with thir family. They’ve finally admitted to being flooded out of Rio Del Mar.

    Anyway being able to get to know you better has def been a silver lining to this difficult time. Hope you folks can make the trip again soon.

    Interdependently, Hally