Give a group of young people a blank map and a way to build in it, and within minutes someone has put a park where the car park is. Last week the CONIFER civic lab in Ghent opened its visioning season, and the first method on the table was a game.
Why a game?
Planning language (“proximity”, “15-minute city”) is abstract. Building is not. In Minecraft Education, changing your mind costs nothing, so young people experiment with their neighbourhood at a scale where mistakes are free. It follows the findings of our first research phase (D3.1): proximity is necessary but not sufficient; safety, public space design and whether a place is worth arriving at shape how accessible a neighbourhood feels.
What we saw
Curiosity and active participation were high; young people formed sharp, specific suggestions about green space and everyday spaces that decision-makers rarely see from their side; small groups and a supportive school environment made individual conversations natural.
Quote of a child: “I want to build tree houses everywhere, I want to have places to meet my friends”
What we are changing
Shorter, more visual introductions; a clear real-world purpose; a stricter time structure between building and presenting; tighter in-game permissions and individual accounts; a clear explanation of observation and recording to participants and guardians at the start.
Three methods, one question
CollectiveUP created the Gamification method and is implementing it in Ghent at Keerpunt school on 29 Oct and 12 Nov. Then, the Art-for-Future Lab, created by the Institute for Art and Innovation, will be implemented by CollectiveUP at Keerpunt on 19 and 26 Nov. Also, the Generative AI method created by MOME will be implemented by CollectiveUP at Keerpunt school on 3 and 10 Dec.
What should this neighbourhood be like in fifteen years, and who decides?
Thank you
Thanks to VUB for coordinating the project, to CollectiveUP for creating the gamification method and managing the civic lab in Ghent; to the Wuppertal Institut, the Institute for Art and Innovation, and our partners in Brussels, Budapest, Cologne, Matosinhos and Toruń, for the shared methods; to the teachers and the school that welcome us, Keerpunt; and to our funders, listed below.
Work with us / follow us: Download D3.1 and D3.2 at conifer15.eu/publications-table/. Questions or partnership ideas: com@collectiveup.be.
CONIFER has been funded by Innoviris (Belgium), Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Belgium), DLR Projektträger (Germany), the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (Hungary), Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) and the National Centre for Research and Development (Poland) under the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership, which has been co-funded by the European Commission. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only.
