Relaunching the PRME UK & Ireland Blog and Knowledge Exchange Hub: Climate Action, Playful Learning and Escape Rooms

By Marc Duffy, University of Ulster, PRME UK & Ireland Local Chapter Committee, PRME Working Group on Climate Change and the Environment, and PRME Lead UUBS.

As we begin a new academic year, we are delighted to help relaunch the PRME UK & Ireland Knowledge Exchange Hub with the first blog of the semester.

The Knowledge Exchange Hub exists to showcase ideas, innovations, collaborations and experiences that are helping to advance responsible management education, sustainability and societal impact across our community. As a Chapter, PRME UK & Ireland works to support higher education institutions in embedding responsible management education and the Sustainable Development Goals, while fostering collaboration, innovation and sharing of practice across our network.

In that spirit, I wanted to reflect on one of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking projects I have been involved with recently: the Climate Action Escape Room (CAER) project and our opportunity to showcase this work at the British Academy of Management (BAM) Conference 2026 alongside my colleagues Sarah Atkinson and Hyemi Shin.

What started as a collaborative exploration of game-based learning has developed into something much bigger. The project has challenged us to think differently about climate literacy, sustainability education and the role that playful learning can play in transforming knowledge into action. More importantly, it has demonstrated that some of the most meaningful learning experiences often emerge when people are actively engaged, working together and, occasionally, having a little fun.

From Knowledge to Action

The Climate Action Escape Room project emerged from a multi-stakeholder collaboration of academics and practitioners linked to the PRME Working Group on Climate Change and the Environment. The initiative was designed to address a challenge many sustainability educators will recognise: people often understand climate issues, yet translating that knowledge into meaningful action remains difficult. The project therefore focuses on bridging this knowledge-to-action gap through transformative pedagogies and escape room activities that connect climate and biodiversity action to everyday decision-making.

Working with colleagues including Sarah Atkinson, Hyemi Shin and a wider network of collaborators from across the UK, our aim has been simple: how can we make sustainability learning more immersive, memorable and impactful?

The answer, at least in part, has been through playful learning.

As highlighted within the PRME i5 framework, meaningful learning often happens when participants are actively engaged, socially connected and genuinely enjoying the learning process. Rather than viewing joy as a distraction from learning, the i5 approach positions it as a powerful catalyst for engagement, reflection and action. The CAER project has provided an ideal vehicle for exploring these ideas in practice.

Two Escape Rooms, Two Distinct Approaches

One of the most interesting aspects of the project has been the development of two very different escape room models.

Although both games seek to improve climate and sustainability literacy, they do so in entirely different ways.

Escape Room One: Biodiversity, Clues and Discovery

The first game takes a more traditional escape room format and focuses on biodiversity and environmental sustainability.

Participants work through a sequence of interconnected clues, puzzles, codes and locks. Each challenge reveals information needed to solve the next stage, creating a narrative journey from identifying environmental challenges through to understanding practical sustainability actions. The game was designed around concepts such as recycling, waste management and biodiversity, encouraging participants to explore environmental issues through exploration and collaborative problem-solving.

What we particularly enjoy about this game is that it creates a genuine sense of curiosity.

Participants are rarely sitting back and waiting for information. Instead, they are actively searching for clues, testing ideas, debating interpretations and building solutions together.

The learning becomes something they discover rather than something they are told.

In many ways, the game reflects the challenges of sustainability itself. Real-world environmental problems rarely provide obvious answers, and progress often depends on collaboration, persistence and a willingness to look at issues from different perspectives.

Escape Room Two: Making Climate Legislation Come Alive

The second escape room takes a very different approach.

Rather than focusing broadly on biodiversity, this game centres on understanding and interpreting the Northern Ireland Climate Change Act.

At first glance, this might sound unusual.

Climate legislation is undoubtedly important, but few people would describe reading legislation as a particularly engaging activity. Policy documents can be technical, detailed and difficult to connect to everyday experiences.

This challenge became the inspiration for the game.

Together with Sarah Atkinson and Hyemi Shin, we explored how legislation could be transformed into an interactive learning experience. Rather than asking participants simply to read and remember policy provisions, the game requires them to interpret information, solve climate-related puzzles, uncover clues and work collaboratively to unlock answers.

The result is that participants engage deeply with the legislation without necessarily realising just how much they are learning along the way.

What was especially encouraging was seeing delegates engage enthusiastically with content that many might otherwise have considered dry or inaccessible. The game transformed climate policy into a problem-solving exercise, creating opportunities for discussion, interpretation and critical thinking in a way that felt engaging rather than instructional.

Sometimes Innovation Comes From Mistakes

An unexpected lesson from the project came from a very ordinary academic mishap.

Shortly before one of the sessions, I realised that I had forgotten to print one of the key pages required for the activity.

My first reaction was panic.

My second reaction was to start redesigning the activity with the resources that were actually available.

Looking back, this may have been one of the most useful moments in the entire project.

The limitation forced me to simplify aspects of the game and focus on what was genuinely essential. Rather than weakening the experience, it actually strengthened it. The revised version became more flexible, easier to facilitate and significantly less resource intensive.

In many respects, that experience helped shape what would become the second escape room model.

It also reminded me that innovation is not always about having access to more resources. Sometimes it comes from working creatively with fewer resources and focusing on what truly matters.

This lighter-touch approach offers exciting possibilities for scaling the project, including hybrid and online delivery formats that could support wider community engagement and broader adoption across institutions.

Sharing the Experience at BAM 2026

Presenting the project at the British Academy of Management Conference 2026 was a real highlight.

Together, Sarah Atkinson, Hyemi Shin and I had the opportunity to introduce delegates to both escape room concepts and explore how playful learning can be used to support climate and biodiversity literacy.

From the moment the activities began, participants threw themselves into the experience.

Groups immediately started discussing clues, testing interpretations, challenging assumptions and helping one another work through the puzzles. The atmosphere was energetic and collaborative from the outset.

Perhaps most importantly, there was laughter.

A great deal of sustainability education can feel heavy, and understandably so. Climate change is a serious issue. Yet one of the lessons from this project is that serious topics do not always require serious delivery methods.

There was even a playful Rick Roll moment hidden within the activities that caught several groups completely by surprise. The mixture of groans, laughter and friendly frustration arguably became one of the most memorable parts of the session.

Moments like this matter because they create emotional connections to learning experiences. Participants remember discussions, discoveries and interactions long after they have forgotten individual slides or statistics.

I would like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who participated in the BAM workshop. Your enthusiasm, curiosity and willingness to embrace something different made the session a genuine success.

The Hidden Curriculum

One of the most interesting aspects of escape room pedagogy is that much of the learning happens beneath the surface.

Participants certainly develop climate and sustainability knowledge, but they also develop a range of wider skills. Throughout the activities, delegates demonstrated teamwork, communication, leadership, resilience, creativity, time management and collaborative problem-solving. These skills emerged naturally through participation rather than through formal instruction.

This hidden curriculum is one of the reasons that escape room approaches align so strongly with the aspirations of responsible management education.

Participants are not simply learning about sustainability. They are practising the skills required to navigate complex sustainability challenges in real-world contexts.

Did Learning Actually Happen?

One of my favourite moments came during the reflection session.

After completing the activity, one participant questioned how much learning had actually taken place.

It was a fair challenge.

After all, participants had spent much of the session solving puzzles, discussing clues and enjoying themselves. It certainly did not feel like traditional learning.

Rather than answering directly, I responded with a few questions about the Northern Ireland

Climate Change Act.

To everyone's surprise, including perhaps their own, the participant answered every one correctly.

The room quickly realised what had happened.

The learning had occurred.

It had simply happened differently.

Instead of memorising information from a lecture or policy document, participants had absorbed knowledge through experience, discussion, interpretation and problem-solving.

They knew the material because they had actively worked with it.

Perhaps that is one of the most powerful lessons from the Climate Action Escape Room project.

When learning is meaningful, social, active and enjoyable, people often learn more than they realise.

Looking Ahead

Reflecting on the project, I am incredibly grateful to my colleagues Sarah Atkinson and Hyemi Shin, whose expertise, creativity and enthusiasm have been instrumental throughout the development and delivery of these activities. I am equally grateful to the wider CAER team and all those who have contributed ideas, feedback and support along the way.

The Climate Action Escape Room project has convinced me that playful learning has an important place within responsible management education.

The climate crisis remains one of the defining challenges of our time. While the challenge itself is serious, our teaching methods need not always be conventional. By embracing creativity, collaboration and innovative pedagogy, we can create learning experiences that are memorable, impactful and action-oriented.

As we relaunch the PRME UK & Ireland Knowledge Exchange Hub for the new academic year, I hope this reflection encourages others across our community to share their own innovations, experiments and lessons learned.

Sometimes meaningful change begins with a simple idea.

Sometimes it begins with a game.

And occasionally, it begins because somebody forgot to print a page.