Back to search

Youths Experiencing Situations through Role-Playing

2019-1-FI01-KA105-0606532019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: FI|SE|DE|PL|DK|ES · Grant: €27,990
EU Citizenship, EU awareness and DemocracyCreativity and cultureYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

By implementing the project the partners aimed to teach a group of youth workers ERA, the European Roleplay Approach, which means helping them understand its many uses for learn and making them comfortable with applying it. We also believe that by bringing youth workers from different nations together in this shared experience they can support each other by building international relationships and learn different perspectives, not only in youth work, but in all aspects of their mindset. We planned the training course for youth workers with the intention of spreading and further developing the European Roleplay Approach (ERA), an extremely successful learning approach that uses a role-playing game as a framework to teach a variety of skills, such as intercultural skills, social skills, communication skills, language skills, teamwork, creativity, leadership skills and more. This particular course focused on using a setting of Finnish history, legends, myths and folklore and drew on sources such as Kalevala. Together the youth workers turned these sources into an engaging game setting. Role-playing is a framework that motivates and activates young people and opens their minds for learning. Creating the right adventures with scenes that challenge the values, beliefs and opinions of the groups, is a skill that the youth workers will acquire during the training course that is at the heart of the project. The training course focused on how to build the framework and connect the desired learning content with the game-based learning approach. The approach uses an immersive game that introduces young people to a stealth learning setting. The course focused on preparing youth workers for implementing ERA (European Roleplay Approach), and it did so by offering a hands on approach which had the youth workers try out the scenes they created and take on the roles of youths quite often before taking a critical look at their results and analyzing what could be improved. The project partners are very active in creating and developing game approaches for young people and have run several youth exchange events in which they used ERA and focused on intercultural learning. The overwhelming success and continued high demand have encouraged the partners to explore the learning through role-playing approach further. Training more youth workers in the past has made it possible for some of the organizations to use ERA locally in various context, such as working with physically disabled youths and using it as a learning approach in local schools. The approach is used as a game that runs over several hours. Youths create heroes who attempt to accomplish tasks in an exciting setting, often set in the cultural background of a certain country. For instance, in previous youth events we have tried a Norse mythology background, a Greek mythology background, a Sami mythology background, and a Minoan setting. Since different heroes have different skills and knowledge, cooperation is the key to overcoming the obstacles and successfully completing the game. Youth workers usually have the role of preparing the adventure in advance and take on the role of game directors during the event. They describe the adventure as a story in which the players, working in teams, can decide what their heroes do and say, so that they influence the direction of the storyline. The game directors can create scenes in such a way that the players are confronted with value judgements that are not clearly wrong or right. The game can be played both inside and outside, making it possible for the teams to go on long walks and play in nature. The game does not involve computers, and it is designed on purpose to get youths away from electronic devices and engage in social dialogue. In this event the focus was on Finland’s history, its folklore, mythology and legends. The game world we created together featured a simple society that lives close to nature. Survival is a central theme, which makes it a great setting to explore values of society and create conflicts through the game which touch on the personal value systems of youths. For instance, the question of ethical behavior can be raised when difficult choices have to be made to survive. One of the big value discussions we have often used before is individual freedom vs. the good of the community. The youth workers learned ERA by creating the Mystic Finland setting for use with their own youths at home and they also learned how to create settings that allows them to teach cultural heritage and explore values.

Project partners (6)