Meet, Make, Play
Learning through play and games, turning visitors into participants.
GEEK (Games Expo East Kent) is a celebration of the creativity and inventiveness of games.
Part museum, part Lab it is a platform to both celebrate the past and test new ideas. Based on HKD’s core belief that learning through play & games allows visitors to better understand a new concept or idea or consider a different perspective, the team devised and implemented GEEK as a festival and series of pop-up events and workshops where these concepts could be explored and promoted.
The first GEEK festival took place in Margate, UK, in 2012 and has run in various forms and scales both in the UK and abroad ever since.
Featured exhibit:
GEEK 2015: Van Dyck Vanishments
GEEK 2015 took place in Margate and was a town-wide gaming festival that included everything from retro consoles to Cosplay.
Van Dyck Vanishments was one part of the festival, providing an immersive, interactive performance that embedded a game throughout the town and weaved through the Turner Contemporary Gallery. The game’s route ultimately invited visitors to delve into famous works of art in a pop-up theatre space, hidden in plain sight behind a fake shop front on Margate’s highstreet. The show ran for two days and provided a unique, family-friendly experience for festival goers and curious passers-by.
Commissioned by Marine Studios and funded by the Arts Council, the event’s clever use of games and open approach to participation generated a merging of audiences from the GEEK festival and Turner Contemporary, inviting everyone to learn about art and enjoy the area in a new way.
