The JOURNEY Now - In the shoes of refugess
This project goes out to develop and multiply various practices on how we can trigger understanding, empathy, and support for refugees in our era of forced migrations, by innovating an award-winning board game into a more agile, easy to multiply, close to realistic presentation of refugee journeys into an Augmented reality version (AR). This is aimed at bringing the dialogue about refugees and migration to each and every Europen’s close experience as long as they have access to a screen. Thus, this project is one of the contributions to a more culturally aware, diverse, and integrated part of the world.
Project Background
This project has its background in the trends provided by the figures provided by the UNHCR, that although the total number of migrants arriving in Europe peaked in October 2015 when approximately 222,500 refugees and migrants arrived in one month, of which most by far (211,700) landed in Greece, coming from Turkey, this flow of migration from the Middle Eastern and North African countries will continue, and most likely to be exuberated by the recent shocks of the Covid19 global pandemic. And of course, this comes with many social-cultural challenges to the European community, especially the young populations, educators, and the job market sector that need to understand, interact, welcome, and support in the settling of the newcomers. In light of these, we cannot just close our eyes and hope that the troubles and related processes will sort themselves out.
Our main outputs
Briefly summarized, the project will produce the following products:
- Result/output 1 – “The Journey ISTANBUL game” – AR-version Creation
- Result/output 2 – Virtual Cultural Heritage Museum (VCHM) on stories of refugee migration and life in Europe
- Result/output 3 – Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game for immersion into migration journeys and cultural experiences
- Result/output 4 – Stories of surviving refugees – in a comic book of superheroes!
Objectives on a wider scale
The project seeks to promote European values and intercultural dialogue to build common histories in the face of immigration into the European Union and new forms of interaction over the past and many years to come. The project’s fundamental value is its aim to innovatively do this through enhancing digital skills, new technologies learning and utilization, critical thinking, and media literacy, but also help to build a virtual cultural heritage museum in order to provide an available repository of cultural knowledge. We want to widen people’s knowledge and knowledge sources through developing a repository of usable, expandable, easily multipliable, socially, and technologically innovative, publicly available products.
The project concretely aims at giving possibilities to European partners to develop innovative ideas – here in the form of an AR migration game and related supportive components, that among others contributes to:
- The strengthening of cross-cutting cooperation around the ideas of European citizenship, and tincture cultural awareness for citizens – in a creative and innovative way.
- To engage different actors – organizations, education institutions, policy circles, etc. to gain the skills and replicable platforms and knowledge/tools repositories to empower current and future generations to be culturally aware, successful innovators in their local communities.
- To provide skills, technologies, and competencies to young people as well as adults to creatively come up with innovative solutions to societal challenges
- To create cultural, intercultural, multicultural awareness among participants by leading them into the essence of other cultures and letting them be better acquainted with their cultural heritage and ultimately to promote intercultural citizenship.
- To discover and appreciate cultural diversity, to enrich our lives in order to prevent humanity’s cultural heritage from being destroyed and forgotten.
The partners
The project is a consortium of four organizations from diverse regions of the European Union including Denmark and Sweden from the North point, and Greece, and Turkey from the South. The organizations representing the countries include:
- Civil Connections Community Foundation (CCCF) of Denmark – https://civilconnections.org/
- Impact Unified AB of Sweden – https://www.impactunified.com/
- Participation Design Agency of Sweden – https://www.participation.design/
- System and Generation Association of Turkey – https://www.systemandgeneration.com/en/
- AddArt of Greece – https://www.addart.gr/