PEACE GAMES Erasmus Project

Project Title

PEACE GAMES

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

After over twenty years of justified -but almost exclusive- insistence in making education outcomes closer to labour market needs, the current context of growing distrust in political authorities and social disharmony in Europe have brought back the attention of policy makers to the need of cultivating social, citizenship and democratic culture learning outcomes in school education and adult learning. In parallel, the covid outbreak evidenced the need to adapt and renew way of teaching and learning, by embracing the development of new communication and information technologies. The Peace Games consortium aims to contribute to the development of citizenship, democratic and social competences by using the full potential of creativity through game-based learning in formal and informal learning. Creativity stands at the core of this project as it is considered both as a way to acquire civic and social key competences, and as a competence to acquire and develop in itself via the use and the development of “self-made” games oriented toward Peace Education. The project aimes at diffusing these competences in learners and at helping teachers to make good educational use of games. This is organised through the identification, assessment and support to the use of relevant games (online or in face-to-face) oriented to civic competences, intercultural communication and conflict transformation already existing and provide guidelines and advices for the development of new “self-made” games relevant for particular contexts.

This project is building on the results of several projects in ERASMUS + which have reviewed good practices and developed competence frameworks for learners and educators aimed at bringing peace, conflict transformation, citizenship education, democratic values and respect for diversity at the centre of daily school practice.¨Peace Games” originated within the Laboratory for Education Inspiring Peace (EIP Lab) created in Sanremo by the UPPER Project (ERASMUS +), responds to the need of offering advice and orientation to the education community and to individual learners, by developing a structured review of existing games, based on a qualified analysis of learning objectives achievable, and a community hub to engage on peace-oriented online and offline games.

2. Objectives and main activities:
To explore, analyse and classify the available supply of peace-oriented games on the basis of their relevance to the most pertinent competence frameworks that are actually developed and tested internationally, e.g. the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) of the Council of Europe, the Framework of Teachers Competence in Peace Education of the UPPER Eramus + project (http://eiplab.eu/upper-project), the European Curriculum on Nonviolent Conflict Transformation (NVCT) developed by the EduCATe Project (ERASMUS+);

To identify, through a substantial mapping exercise based on the competence frameworks, existing gaps and engage the game developers community in the creation of new games addressing the identified gaps, also using existing sets of peace exercises that have not yet taken a game configuration;

To develop an online hub able to provide information, advice and support to education institutions and educators who are interested to use the potential of games to achieve learning outcomes in these competence areas and engage “indie game development communities” in the creation of new games (e.g. through “thematic game jams” days with young designers, game developing starts up, school teams, etc.);

To test and validate the use of the online hub and available games in ten pilot schools in five countries and, on a voluntary base, in other local communities and civil society organisations engaged in citizenship education;

To develop and validate a Guide on “How to use, adopt and adapt game-based learning in traditional education settings ”

To provide guidance and a collaborative context to individual learners who are already engaged in online games and might discover the interest and life-relevance of peace-oriented games;

To draw lessons from the review and the online hub activities in order to feed the present education policy debate on citizenship and peace education.

In order to achieve the project objectives there is a need to bring together complementary expertise existing in different organisations and different countries; the members of the consortium presenting the proposal have been chosen on the basis of their relevant experience and all have successfully run networking, dissemination and valorization actions in the past. We believe that this consortium represents a network of experts in peace education, games and innovation projects in Europe and, as such, is in a unique position to create consistent impact and sustainable results based on the project’s outcomes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 296416 Eur

Project Coordinator

FONDATION DES REGIONS EUROPEENNES POUR LA RECHERCHE EN EDUCATION ET ENFORMATION & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Asociación cultural Da2 Trucados
• FH JOANNEUM GESELLSCHAFT MBH
• ISTITUTO INTERNAZIONALE DI DIRITTO UMANITARIO
• Liceo Statale “G.D.Cassini”
• MINISTRY FOR EDUCATION
• Evangelische Schule Neuruppin
• Université Côte d’Azur