What if the biodiversity crisis was an escape room?

Hindi lang tayo ang sakop ng buhay; ang bawat buhay sa buhay, magkadugtong-dugtong. (We are NOT the only ones embraced by life; ALL life is interconnected.)

Bonifacio Art Foundation, Inc. (BAFI) and the United States Agency for International Development have joined forces to bring you a two-part biodiversity special of MIND S-COOL TV as well as a traveling Biodiversity Crisis Escape Room (BCER). Both projects serve to innovatively highlight the critical concepts of “roles” and “collaboration” in addressing the biodiversity crisis as well as the “measures” of the values, not only monetary, that we should all consider living with nature.

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BCER is the first, traveling, experiential, immersive space, made up of 3 main rooms that will stand for the biodiversity crisis. The goal is for the participants to escape the crisis TOGETHER by helping one another realize and fulfill their roles. BCER will be hosted by BAFI’s The Mind Museum right after its opening at the museum on May 22 and will travel to host venues in Subic (Harbor Point, June15), Puerto Princesa (Robinson’s Mall, June 29) and Davao (Abreeza Mall, July 27) to enjoin participants who include – legislators, enforcers, regulators as well as community leaders – including cultural leaders AND local flora and fauna as well in the form of life-sized moving puppets, manned by professional puppeteers. It will also welcome the general public to experience this very unique and meaningful escape room on the dates mentioned.

Inside BCER, participants will take on roles that they would randomly pick. They will enter 3 connected rooms that they could only escape from if they understand what needs to be done and that they work together. The challenges they will face in each room are closely tied to realizing the “Mga Sukat ng Kalikasan” (measures/values of nature) in order to escape the biodiversity crisis. The experience will be facilitated so it will mimic the real human conversations and actions that need to happen in decision-making involving our natural heritage in which we all share in terms of not just benefits but also responsibilities. 

The 2-part biodiversity special of MIND S-COOL TV, the #1 science show across all channels is a TV version of BCER fleshing out a narrative that will involve our main questers as well as non-human “players” who will be called to help out since MIND S-COOL has been held hostage by the biodiversity crisis. They will experience being trapped in the rooms together with other characters, including life-sized puppets that represent non-humans such as flora, fauna, habitats, abiotic elements giving nature a “voice”. The story of this special 2-part can be summarized as “all life is embedded in nature, and we need to realize its many values because if we don’t, the quality of our interconnected lives will be degraded.”  Part 1 of this special will air on May 26, 11 am and replayed at 4:30 PM on OnePh Channel on Cignal while part 2 will air the week after. These will be followed by replays for 6 weeks.

Kathy Wachala, Chief of Party for USAID’s Sustainable Interventions for Biodiversity, Oceans and Landscapes (SIBOL) project, says: “This partnership with BAFI to do BCER and MIND S-COOL TV enabled us to roll-out a very powerful way for stakeholders to internalize their actual roles and work together to come up with solutions to the biodiversity crisis.” Maria Isabel Garcia, Managing Director/Curator of BAFI, also comments on the project, saying, “We are so inspired by the kind of partnership we have with USAID SIBOL since it allowed us to recruit very imaginative ways of engagement for science to serve life, biodiversity.”

We can all escape the biodiversity crisis if we understand that all lives are interconnected and that we all work together, now.