Before the break I was contacted by our Press team as The Conversation were after someone to write about board games for the holidays. They had some categories they wanted the games to fit under so I said yes and consulted the games team.

The Conversation said they had a lot of interest - of course they are contacting a number of institutes and could I let them know the games we picked. We did. I never heard from them again and it appears this was the contact/article they went with - theconversation.com/an-expert…

I ended up buying Heat: Pedal to the Metal and played it with the family over the holidays—it’s really good.

However, I wanted to share the games we pitched with summaries based on their categories:

Love Letter - A TRAVEL FOR GAME

Love Letter is a compact travel companion, fitting easily into a bag or pocket. With just a small number of cards and a handful of tokens, this deduction game packs surprising depth into a tiny package. With a number of franchise themes you can pick your own family genre. Set up and play in minutes - www.zmangames.com/game/love…

Sushi GO! - A QUICK GAME

Sushi GO! delivers fast-paced card-drafting fun in 15-20 minutes. Simple rules, simultaneous card selection, and no downtime between turns make it perfect for squeezing in multiple quick rounds - www.hobbycraft.co.uk/sushi-go-…

Codenames - EASY TO RETURN TO

Codenames is brilliantly accessible for players who haven’t touched a board game in years. Giving and guessing word clues feels familiar with no complex rules, making it effortless for mixed groups and casual players - www.czechgames.com/news/code…

Wilmot’s Warehouse - FUN FOR ALL THE FAMILY

Wilmot’s Warehouse brings families together with charming cooperative puzzle-solving. Players organize and retrieve items from a chaotic warehouse, encouraging communication without competitive tension. Quirky humor and simple mechanics engage different ages and skill levels - wilmotswarehouse.com

Daybreak - GAME FOR THE BOARD GAME EXPERT FAMILY

Daybreak offers rich, strategic depth that enthusiasts crave. This cooperative climate crisis game features interconnected systems and meaningful decisions requiring careful co-operation. It provides satisfying complexity and replayability for families who enjoy sinking their teeth into a game - daybreakgame.org

And if you want even more recommendations check out this Guardian article - Plus FYI www.theguardian.com/lifeandst…

Recently @dajbelshaw@mastodon.social posted about the fact we cannot apply the “old” model for a “successful” life:

work hard, save patiently and climb the career ladder, max out your pension

It’s a depressingly accurate article and one I agree with. He also connects this to the issue of starting a career with university debt, which compounds the problem. Starting a career with £27,750 of graduate debt is far from ideal, and the current economic climate makes this burden even more problematic.

However, this raises a deeper question about the reductive argument that university education should command higher future wages.

I believe education should be free, with the state and universities funding study through to PhD level. At Winchester School of Art, we’ve taken a small step in this direction by introducing scholarships (from 24/25) that reduce fees for home students pursuing master’s programmes.

A well-educated society is vital—though universities aren’t the only institutions that can provide this education. The recent introduction of V-Levels (planned for September 2027) is a case in point. While these new vocational qualifications aim to simplify the post-16 landscape by replacing around 900 existing qualifications including BTECs, they exemplify a concerning trend: education increasingly designed around “real-world job standards” and employer-led outcomes. For creative disciplines, this creates particular challenges. BTECs have been a successful pathway into creative higher education precisely because they allowed for exploration and development rather than narrow technical training. Their replacement with qualifications explicitly framed around immediate employability risks diminishing the very qualities that make creative education transformative.

This brings me to my central concern: we must challenge the reductive framing that has taken hold—the idea that university education is purely an economic transaction where students pay fees in exchange for highly paid jobs. This transactional mindset has dominated since the introduction of fees and the subsequent push for mass university attendance. The declining graduate premium only exposes the hollowness of this framing: if the financial return is diminishing, the transactional model collapses entirely.

Education should be transformative, not merely transactional. When we reduce it to a financial exchange—or worse, to a skills pipeline for industry—we diminish both its intrinsic value and its broader social purpose. A well-educated society needs critical thinkers, creative problem-solvers, and people who can engage meaningfully with complex ideas, not just workers trained to meet current employer demands.