We are thrilled to announce that Trust in Play: European School of Urban Game Design will be open for new adventures in 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture! We are working hard to bring everything together with our old and new partners in play, so stay tuned while we explore/create and mystify new ways of play in public space.
What to expect: workshops and social play events, peer to peer learning and hands on experience, international designers, an open event dedicated to public space, play and trust during spring 2023, a SUMMER SCHOOL in Elevsis during summer 2023 and one of the most vibrant communities of play meeting up in Elevsis and in various online events throughout 2023.
When the pandemic happened, we got worried about how we can document the various TiP processes, online, offline, and hybrid moments of change. A way to celebrate our resilience, failures and successes. We decided to go old-school and create a playful e-zine, a yearzine as every school should have and send it as a surprise gift to our trainees and collaborators. A small capsule of memories, filled with timelines, future projections, game ideas, playful collabs, lessons learned and of course the final projects of our trainees! Without any further delay please enjoy the
We invite you to join our Nomadic Branch Solstice’s Games Party: maybe the longest zoom call you have ever attended, a 10-hour marathon with multiple locations (yes, you will be taken to places) that kicks off at 3 PM CET (Berlin/Belgrade/Warsaw), and ends in the middle of the shortest night of the year.
Participation is open for anyone to join, however we do have a zoom dress code: summer love! Wear sunglasses, pick your favorite beach as background, prepare yourself a generous fruit salad, biodegradable glitter, sit in the real sun, wear a flower crown, cover your face with sunscreen, just send us some summer vibe!
± Check this link (https://community.trustinplay.eu/t/solstices-games-program/896) for complete program. Some highlights: The Nomadic Branch presents their Urban Games in a series of 5 minutes talks to present 7 new games they designed over the last year. You will be taken into different realms, various virtual, mental, and physical spaces.
“Let’s be heroes” is a zoom room where we will play a game about meditating and self-evaluating who we are and want to be. It was designed by Vian Nguyen (they/them), a recent graduate of the MICA Game Design program (Baltimore, US).
“Role-playing with young people” is a zoom panel where we will explore how TTRPGs can help young people better connect with their peers and the world around them, by Alex Levene (he/him) from Bristol, UK.
We will also mix some drinks, sing along, and try our ASMR skills. We all might need a youtube career soon.
And more!
The summer is upon us, with fierce weather, unbearable humidity, intense showers, thunders and tropical storms (or maybe not). Time to celebrate the beginning of a new season with the hope for more public space, less social distancing, more games, and, yes, less back pain.
Bring your summer vibes and get ready for the longest Zoom call of your life!!
TiP Quarantine Jam #1
Sunday, 12th of April 2020, Sebastian Quack
On Tuesday, March 24, Trust in Play hosted an online game jam to keep our creative juices running, get together and explore how to make the best out of some of the new realities of Coronaworld.
Around 25 participants connected via zoom, formed teams to work in smaller groups, assembling at the half way point and at the end of the jam to playtest and discuss the developed formats.
We were very happy to welcome a lovely mixed group of trainees, independent participants from the training week and some completely new guests that dropped in.
Most of the developed formats explored how to make use of the grid interface that comes with video conferencing tools like zoom or jitsi.
During the final playtest, we played a poetic indoor psychogeography game where players gave each other simple personal tasks that everyone performed in parallel in the grid; a sneaky/goofy performative dancing game about figuring out who is dancing to the same tune as you are; and an experiment in using Live-Action Roleplaying in a teleconferencing setting.
You can find detailed instructions for the pyschogeography game and the LARP on the itchio page for the jam. The dancing game was based off of an existing little mobile dancing game by Simon Johnson that you can find here.
Learnings for the next Quarantine Jam:
Even though everyone was apart, the basic dynamics, struggles, joys of game jamming were still surprisingly recognisable. This was totally a game jam!
But being on zoom with 25 people for around 8 hours gets very tiring – make sure to add enough long breaks and moments where you work away from the screen!
Sadly participants cannot move freely between break out rooms in zoom and need to be allocated by the hosts – we need a different setup for next time – perhaps a combination of zoom and jitsi.
Understandably, all of the games developed reacted in some way to the telefoncerencing setup. Once people are more used to this, it will be interesting to focus on ways of playing with other parts of reality, for example by working on other ways to engage with the indoor spaces and the people that are there, or by making use of the outdoors inside the given limitations that vary from place to place
As a school, we are planning to continue with these types online experiments, highlighting the creative and social resillience that are strong in our community and in the wider urban play field.
At the same time, we feel it is important to resist a full “virtualisation” of all activities – and make use of all available tools to continue to push for a world that allows for embodied, physical, diverse forms of participation in the shared spaces we inhabit.
Big thanks to everyone who took part in the jam!
Training Week Video
Thursday, 9th of January 2020, Sebastian Quack
Here’s a video from the Trust in Play Training Week at Innovathens.
Trust in Play International Training Week
Thursday, 21st of November 2019, Maria Saridaki
Thank you all for a life changing experience! A few photos until we update you with what happened, in the meantime check out our community where we tried to keep notes during this busy week!
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Getting ready for Trust in Play Training Week in Athens
Sunday, 8th of September 2019, Maria Saridaki
One of the pivotal cornerstones of Trust in Play project is the International Training Week in Athens. This experience will allow all branches and school organisers to meet up for a week and offer training sessions and playful experiences. The space that will host this training week, will be Innovathens, an integrated hub supporting Innovation and Creative Industries, of the Municipality of Athens
As the weeks are approaching, TiP school organisers are all working hard to design and offer a unified experience to trainees of the three school branches and independent participants traveling from different corners of the world, to meet in Athens.
Early on we decided that apart from our 30 official TiP trainees in the Amsterdam, Athens and Nomadic branch we would also give the opportunity to 40 independent participants to join the training week on their own expenses. We hope that this interdisciplinary group of highly motivated and creative individuals will spark more interesting discussions and experiences on public space, game design and trust and will lead in the formation of a vibrant community.
The design of this training experience will be based on different levels of trust, starting up with a two days sessions and workshops from our experts to the TiP participants and continuing with a much more horizontal organisation with an unconference and a game jam. The main scope behind this educational design is to show trust to the knowledge, expertise and instinct of every participant, allowing them to create sessions and offer experiences, leading up to a game design experience that will bring all their talents and skills into the spotlight. Our hope is to not only bring together a community but allow discussion on the realities and possibilities of being an urban artist and urban games designer in europe and around the globe.
Open Call has closed!
Friday, 28th of June 2019, Maria Saridaki
Thank you all for your applications! We are blown away by the response in number and quality and can’t wait to continue the conversation in many ways in our Trust in Play community platform. So many wonderful practitioners from different fields, backgrounds, countries and demographics sharing their love for urban game design and the interest towards trust in our cities and playful practices.
To those who submitted an application – we will send out emails confirming that we received your materials on Monday, detailing the timeline for the next steps of the process. To those who didn’t, you can still be part of our vibrant community, come and share your story!
Trust in Play Open Call
Tuesday, 16th of April 2019, Maria Saridaki
Apply now to become part of Trust in Play – the European School of Urban Game Design!
Are you interested in taking on a major role in the design of urban games and playful experiences in the near future? Are you a recent graduate or emerging cultural practitioner in game & interaction design, urban planning & architecture, activism, art or a related field?
Become a trainee of Trust in Play! As a trainee, you will
join the international training week in Athens in Oct 2019 (travel expenses covered for trainees based in Europe)
receive local and e-training by experts in urban game design, urban planning & cultural organisation as part of one of the three branches of the school (Amsterdam, Athens, and Nomadic)
create your own urban game in a small team with, mentorship, production & development support over the course of 1 year
Timeline
April 16, 2019 – launch Open Call May 31, 2019 – close of Open Call (midnight CET) June 17-21, 2019 – notification of results September 2019– local meetups October 29 – November 2, 2019 – International Training Week in Athens December 2019 – February 2020 – participatory design local meetups Spring and summer 2020 – realisation of your urban game project
Trainees will be selected by the school organizers after filling out this online form (update: the online form is closed)
After various skype meetings it was finally time for the Trust in Play consortium to meet in person.The dates of our Kick-off meeting in Berlin were January 9, 10 and 11 and for our three-day meeting we were happy to be hosted at the International Alumni Center of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
Trust in Play Consortium 2019
Present from GOETHE – INSTITUT were the artistic directors, Maria Saridaki and Sebastian Quack and the Project and financial coordinators, Iris Asimakopoulou and Matoula Koutsari. From the AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Martijn de Waal, Gabriele Ferri and Tamara Dobler. From EDGERYDERS, Matteo Uguzzoni, and Noemi Salantiu and from TECHNOPOLIS ATHENS, Konstantina Zachari and Anthi Christou. After three days of discussions, presentations, changes, decision making, brainstorming and many moments of play, we finished the meeting with a night urban wandering in the streets of Berlin.
Next time we will meet in Athens for the TiP International Training Week