This presentation was delivered on October 21, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.
Description:
Educational live action role-play (edu-larp) has a huge potential as a learning tool in both formal and informal education. There are many ways to design edu-larps, and by finding the right ways to adapt designs to prerequisites such as the learning environment and target group the educational impact can be improved. In this presentation Erik Strömberg, actor, drama teacher, and designer at LajvVerkstaden and Karin Johansson, owner of the experience design company Imaginato, and researcher focused on social experience design at Uppsala University, will talk about the diversity of edu-larps. In the presentation they will go through a portfolio of different cases of edu-larps that they have been part of creating for a wide range of learning venues and target groups. Through the cases they highlight similarities and differences in the design processes and design choices. Examples of venues are museums, classrooms, outdoor school activities and libraries, each with unique prerequisites but also common denominators. When it comes to target groups the presentation will look into cases for different age groups as well as how edu-larp design can be adapted for specific target groups such as refugees, and for special needs such as wheelchair users or persons that are on the autism spectrum. The presentation will provide inspiration, tools and methods for how to adapt edu-larp designs to different learning environments and target groups. Based in authentic cases the presentation will provide critical reflections, design implications and practical considerations relevant for professional edu-larp design. Rather than one recipe for how to design edu-larps, the presentation aims at providing insight in the importance of a goal oriented design approach and the need to understand and adapt to the unique pre-conditions of different learning environments and target groups when creating edu-larps.
Bios:
Karin Johansson is an experience designer, project leader and educator who creates playful learning experiences, for among others Sida, WWF, IKEA and the Museum of World Culture. After several years as a teacher, larp educator and running her own design company, Karin has now moved into academia, doing a PhD in Human Computer Interaction at Uppsala University, focused on experience design for societal values. Outside work (and a bit at work as well…) Karin is multi-nerding; gaming, larping, doing a horror musical roleplay pod, reenacting and almost anything else that sparks imagination, preferable together with other people and lots of Fika.
Erik Strömberg is a Drama teacher and educated actor, working in the field of live action roleplay (Larp) and educational Larp. Erik has been active in many areas, working with different kinds of experiences for participants in museums, schools, public areas and parks, and more. He has designed experiences for a wide variety of ages and levels of participation, from the more passive viewer to the more interactive participant. He is working at LajvVerkstaden, in projects like “Autistic Fantasy” where he creates larps with ASD Students, and “Green Edularp” where he is creating an international curriculum and lesson plan for using educational Larp when discussing environmental questions.
Click here to read PDF of slides.
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This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
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Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin. Video edited by Rezmo (Mohammad Mohammad Rezaie).