🇮🇹 TC "Games Are No Joke" / 28.04-06.05.2026 - Filadelfia (VV), Calabria, Italy - 2025-1-IT03-KA153-YOU-000303546
Updated: Oct 21
Games Are No Joke: when board games become a language for youth work
Seven countries, one week of play, and six educational board games designed from scratch in Calabria.
🎲 EXPLORE OUR WEB APP OF GAMES ARE NO JOKE! https://games-are-no-joke.web.app/
For one week in spring 2026, the small town of Filadelfia, in the heart of Calabria, turned into a laboratory of play. 21 youth workers from seven countries: Italy, Türkiye, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Serbia and North Macedonia came together to test a simple but ambitious idea: that a board game can open the kind of conversations a lecture never will.
Games Are No Joke (GANJ) was the first training course ever led by Arte Diem Calabria as the main organiser, and a milestone for our association. Over seven days of activities the group played, took games apart, explored the town as if it were a game board, tested each other's prototypes and, by the end, had created six games, a shared Game Design Toolkit and a network of colleagues spread across Europe.
The starting point was a real challenge. Many young people today feel unheard on political and social issues, while misinformation, polarisation and extremist narratives put pressure on social cohesion. Youth workers, meanwhile, rarely get structured training in methods that allow them to tackle these topics without turning them into a lesson. Games lower our defences, make room for other points of view and give us a safe space to explore sensitive subjects. This is why we chose them as a method, not just as a technique.
There was also a second, quieter idea behind the course: that the best way to learn how to use games in youth work is to go through the whole process yourself. Participants were not asked to listen to theory about games; they were asked to play, to analyse, to design, to fail in front of others, to fix what did not work and to present the result. That is the thread running through the week you are about to read.
📌 The project at a glance
Project | Games Are No Joke (GANJ) |
Programme | Erasmus+, Key Action 1 – KA153-YOU, mobility of youth workers (training course) |
Project code | 2025-1-IT03-KA153-YOU-000303546 |
Dates | 28 April – 6 May 2026 (activities from 29 April to 5 May) |
Venue | Filadelfia (VV), Calabria, Italy |
Participants | 21 youth workers, educators and youth leaders, accompanied by two trainers |
Countries | Italy, Türkiye, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Serbia and North Macedonia |
Topics | Quality and innovation of youth work · Preventing radicalisation · Creativity, arts and culture |
Working language | English |
Host organisation | Arte Diem Calabria, with the support of the Italian National Agency for Youth (Agenzia Italiana per la Gioventù) |
🎯 What we wanted to achieve
Train youth workers in game design, facilitation and educational planning, so that games become genuine learning tools rather than simple entertainment.
Use games to encourage dialogue, perspective-taking and critical thinking, and to recognise and counter misinformation and extremist narratives.
Inspire participants to design their own prototypes around social themes, and to record what they learned in a Game Design Toolkit that other organisations can use.
Build an international network of youth workers who share an interest in game-based learning and social impact.
The adventure began well before the first icebreaker. Each partner organisation selected its own youth workers and supported them throughout the project, looking for people with experience in non-formal education who were curious about games, whether or not they had ever designed one. Everyone received practical information on travel, accommodation, safety and the code of conduct, and individual needs were collected privately so that the team could prepare for them in advance.
A messaging group helped the participants meet each other online, share questions and organise their arrival. By the time the first people reached Calabria, the group was no longer made up of strangers.
🧩The week, step by step
The programme moved from getting to know each other, to understanding how games work, to creating and testing our own. From the third day the activities stopped being separate sessions and became stages of a single path, in which every step prepared the next one. For that reason, from there on we tell the story following the process of making a game rather than day by day.
Along the way there were a few moments that, looking back, marked the turning points of the course. We have highlighted them in blue.
🤝 Breaking the ice through play
A group of strangers cannot design a game together, let alone talk about difficult topics, without trust. That is why the first day was almost entirely built around play, movement and small encounters. We began with the Walk Theatre: participants walked around the room and followed the facilitator's instructions, first saying only their name, then their name and a passion, and finally behaving as if they already knew the person in front of them. In a few minutes, the awkward first contact had turned into laughter.
The rest of the morning pursued three simple goals. The first was to learn each other’s names and faces in a way nobody would forget, using the language of games from the very first minutes, so that play became the group’s common code. The second was to give everyone a sense of belonging through small shared rituals, from personal badges to a break with a local flavour, which offered a first taste of Calabrian life. The third was to move conversations from the surface to something a little deeper. Short one-to-one encounters with reflective prompts invited people to say more than where they came from, and a personal envelope, which each participant decorated and which the others could fill with comments over the following days, introduced a habit that would run through the whole course: feedback as a gift rather than a judgement.
In the afternoon the focus moved from the group to the subject of the course. The goal was to show that everyone already had plenty to say about games before designing a single one. A debate facilitated by a French youth worker from the group asked participants to take a position on what games do in everyday life and beyond entertainment, to defend it and to listen to the opposite view. It was an exercise in argumentation and critical thinking, and a reminder that games are never neutral.
The remaining sessions were about putting expectations on the table and understanding how we would work together. Participants shared what they hoped to learn, what worried them and what they could contribute, while the team presented the objectives, rules and methodology of the course and gave a first introduction to Youthpass. Reflecting on the roles that people play within a group helped everyone think about responsibility and identity in the team. The day closed with a short team challenge that was, in miniature, the cycle the week was built on: create something for others, see how it works, talk about what to improve and try again.
By the end of the first day, the group had names, badges, expectations and a first shared experience of designing something for others. Participants described the day as interactive and engaging, and noted that the variety of activities helped build trust and balanced fun with reflection.
🗺️ Filadelfia as a game board
Why go to Filadelfia to design a game? Because the best educational games do not come out of nowhere: they come from real places, real stories and real people. Instead of working only from a table and a blank sheet of paper, we wanted participants to start from what was around us, and the town that was hosting us became our design material. The aim was to train a different way of looking: to see a square, a shop or a street corner as someone who has to turn it into a game would. Where would the spaces of a board be? Which characters live here? What could become a mission, an obstacle or a resource?
Going out into town also served several purposes at once. It put participants in contact with the community and culture of the place where they were staying, and encouraged curiosity and respect towards it. It trained observation and research skills, and the habit of collecting small, concrete details, such as the atmosphere of a place, the habits of a shop or a story told by a local, which can later become cards, spaces and missions. And it made it clear that every group, wherever it works, has its own material for games waiting to be discovered.
The research did not stay in notebooks. Teams brought their findings back to the room and presented the first concepts to the rest of the group, which was a gentle introduction to explaining an idea in a few minutes and to receiving constructive feedback from peers. This part of the day also linked the playful side of the course to its more serious purpose: a workshop led by a Macedonian youth worker explored why games matter for learning and social development, and how they can open conversations on delicate topics such as the radicalisation of ideas, which is at the heart of the project.
Alongside all this, we cared about the group as much as about the task. The training T-shirts with the association’s identity and the Erasmus+ logos gave everyone a shared identity, one representative from each country gathered the feelings and suggestions of their national group so that every voice could influence how the course went, and the evening belonged to Türkiye and Italy, who opened the series of intercultural nights.
The first board game concepts were born from the streets of Filadelfia, and the participants received the simplified Game Design Document template that would help each team document its prototype
A great deal of the learning in GANJ was peer-led. The debate on board games on day one and the workshop on learning and social development on day two were facilitated by participating youth workers, and the energisers of the week were proposed by the national groups: the French group, the Romanian team and others. The course thus became a place where practitioners learned from each other's experience, not only from the trainers.
♟️Understanding the machinery of a game
Before building anything, the group had to see how a game works from the inside. Designing a game is not only a matter of good ideas: it requires understanding why some rules create excitement and others create boredom, why some games bring people together and others leave them apart. That is why, before anyone drew a single card, we devoted time to taking games apart.
The first aim was to experience, not just to hear, how much a game depends on its rules. By playing a simple, familiar game and then changing its rules, participants discovered in a matter of minutes that even the smallest change, such as a different goal, a new limit or a different order of turns, transforms the whole experience. This was meant to give everyone the confidence to see rules as something that can be designed rather than just obeyed, and to develop a taste for experimentation, critical thinking and iterative design, which would be needed once they started to create their own games.
The second aim was to give the group a common language. Experience is powerful, but a team needs words to share what it sees. For this purpose we introduced the MDA framework, which looks at games through three lenses: Mechanics (the rules), Dynamics (the behaviour of the players that those rules produce) and Aesthetics (the emotions and experiences that this behaviour creates). The framework helps to explain why a game feels the way it does, and it gave participants a shared vocabulary to describe, compare and criticise games, which they would later use to talk about their own prototypes.
The rest of the day’s activities, such as the short energisers prepared by the national groups, had a purpose too. A few simple rules were enough to create attention, excitement and cooperation, which confirmed what the workshops were showing: that a handful of rules can bring a group together. They also kept energy high and allowed participants to lead a moment of the programme and bring a little of their own culture to the room.
The group now shared a common language for talking about games. The MDA framework was no longer an abstract model; it had been tested on a game that everybody had played and then changed.
🎙️Putting learning into words: the podcasts
Before moving on to creation, we wanted participants to pause and put into words what they had understood so far. They worked in seven groups to prepare and record short podcasts answering a question that sums up the whole project: "Why do games matter for learning and social development?". Each group had to decide on its argument, structure it, choose who would speak and when, and record it.
The activity trained public speaking, teamwork, argument building and basic media production, and it was also a way to take stock of the group's positions after the debates and workshops of the first days. After recording, the group listened to the results and gave each other feedback on clarity, structure, confidence and communication style. Many participants discovered that explaining why games matter is not the same as believing it, and that a clear message takes practice.
The day closed with a reflection before dinner. Participants first described the day with a single word, then used UNO cards and a Turkish board game with numbers from 1 to 10 to evaluate their experience visually and share how they felt, using games themselves as an evaluation tool. In the evening, the Romanian and Bulgarian groups shared their cultures with presentations, traditional dances, games, quizzes and informal conversation.
Seven podcasts were recorded in a single afternoon. They have since become part of the project's public material and show, in the participants' own voices, how a group of youth workers understood the role of games in learning.
🎙️ You can watch all the episodes in Arte Diem Calabria youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWXAb2JNV9SpAyW0k-ym14KsMPzYw5uuc
🎲 From themes to prototypes
The fourth day opened the creative phase. After a morning warm-up of games like Hi, Ha, Ho and movement commands such as left, right, up, down, monkey and penguin, participants formed working groups, chose the social and educational theme of their game, confirmed their members and documented each team with a group photo. The structure was kept flexible so that people could still move between groups if they wanted or needed to. Choosing their own theme was important: it gave each team ownership of its game from the very beginning.
The groups were then introduced to the stages of developing a board game: idea, paper concept, playtest prototype, refined prototype, playtested MVP, production files, manufactured product and teaching-ready launch. This framework allowed teams to place their work in a real design and production process and to understand how far they would go during the week: a playable, tested prototype with clear learning goals, ready to be reproduced by other youth workers.
Teams then started the most creative and demanding step: transforming themes such as dialogue and empathy, personal development, creativity, inclusion, mental health, decision-making, risk-taking and climate anxiety into playable ideas. For each theme they had to decide what the players want to achieve, which actions they can take, what makes the game interesting and what the players should learn from it. Teams worked on player goals, mechanics, meaningful interactions and learning outcomes, and developed the first playable version of their game.
Good game design also needs a good team, so the day included several communication energisers: a variation of the telephone game in which a Serbian word was passed along two rows and often arrived transformed, a hand-signal squeeze that travelled through a line of held hands, and a music-and-chairs game to reset the energy. In the afternoon each team continued developing its prototype and shared a short update with the others. The day ended with the Hug Game, an emotional group activity in which participants responded to prompts by hugging the people they felt connected with, wanted to know better or had shared something with. The Macedonian and Serbian groups then presented their countries in the evening.
Working groups were formed, each with its theme, and the first structured educational game concepts appeared. The group also made a point of looking after the process: game design, as the day showed, needs trust, communication, flexibility and care inside the team.
On the fifth day, after the energisers The Invisible Bunny, an imagination exercise that ended in a shared comic moment, and a movement activity on pressure and escape, teams returned to the games they had started the previous day. They checked whether the basic rules worked, clarified the main goal, adjusted the components and tried to make the gameplay loop easier to understand. Before lunch, a Product Conclusion Meeting made sure that every team had a functional version ready for peer testing, which helped groups to move from discussion to something that could really be played.
By lunchtime on day five, every team had a playable prototype. Ideas on paper had become games that other people could sit down and play.
🎭 Playtesting: letting others break your game
The afternoon of day five was the moment of truth. Teams exchanged games and played each other's prototypes, which gave every group a fresh view of how real players understood the rules, what felt engaging and where confusion appeared. For many designers, it was the first time that their game was in the hands of people who had not helped to create it, which is the best possible way to discover what is clear and what is not.
To make the testing useful, teams used a Game Play Report Sheet to record how clear, engaging and effective each game was, while observers took notes on how players interacted, how the game flowed and what impact it had on learning. Each group then presented the logic of its game, the theme behind it, the experience it wanted to create for players and the educational impact it was aiming for, and listened to the feedback of the others.
After the tests, teams sat down to discuss what had worked and what needed to change. They simplified unclear rules, rebalanced mechanics and strengthened the link between gameplay and learning goals, so that each game did what its designers said it would do. Participants experienced first-hand a method they can repeat with the young people they work with: test early, observe without defending, listen, change. The French participants closed the day with a cultural night full of food, music and conversation, a relaxed space after an intense day of prototypes.
Every game was tested by a different team and improved on the basis of real feedback. Playtesting turned from a concept in a handout into a shared experience of how a game gets better.
🧭 A day outside the classroom: Tropea and Pizzo
On 4 May we left the training room and set off on a study visit to Tropea and Pizzo, two of the most beautiful towns on Calabria's Tyrrhenian coast. After several days of intense work, the day gave the group room to breathe, but it was far from a simple outing: we explored the towns, their streets, their landscapes and their everyday life with the same curiosity with which we had explored Filadelfia on the second day.
The visit was also a lesson in how places, stories and people can inspire ideas, even for game design. Walking, observing and sharing the territory together offered a different setting to reflect informally on the process so far, to take photos and create visual content, and to build bonds beyond work groups before the final push. Participants returned with fresh energy, new impressions and a stronger sense of being a team.
🎬Watch the video of this day:
📢 Showcase, Toolkit and goodbyes
The last day of activities was devoted to showing what had been created and to making sure it would not stay in the room. In the morning came the game showcase. Each team presented its final prototype, explaining the concept, the mechanics and the educational objectives, and then invited the rest of the group to play short rounds, with live demonstrations instead of slides. A structured feedback session followed, in which participants shared their insights on the effectiveness and the engagement of each game and on possible improvements, giving a peer evaluation that put into practice what they had learned about feedback throughout the week.
In the afternoon, participants turned the experience into a resource for other youth workers. Working in small groups with a collective writing method, they wrote the sections of the Game Design Toolkit, covering game mechanics, strategies to engage young people and case studies of the games created during the training. The aim was a practical document that organisations that did not take part in the course could also use. The final version was compiled as an output of the training.
The closing hours were devoted to making sense of the experience. Participants finalised the media and contents created during the week and completed the Learning Map and the final evaluation. They exchanged personal messages, shared a circle of gratitude and prepared their Youthpass, the certificate that recognises the competences developed during the course, such as facilitating learning, designing programmes, working in teams, communicating and intercultural sensitivity.
Six prototypes were presented, a collective Toolkit was written and every participant prepared their Youthpass. The week closed not with a presentation but with a set of tools that others can pick up and use.
🌍 Around the world in the evenings
Every evening a different group opened the doors to its culture, so that by the end of the week most of the countries involved had introduced their traditions to the others: Türkiye and Italy on the second night, Romania and Bulgaria on the third, North Macedonia and Serbia on the fourth, and France on the fifth. Each country chose how to present itself, with quizzes, traditional dances, music, videos, games and food.
The intercultural nights were an important part of the project, not just a social complement to it. They gave participants the chance to see each other beyond their role as youth workers, to compare very different ways of understanding games, traditions and community, and to build relationships that went beyond the working groups. Many of the friendships, and the ideas for future cooperation, started at those tables.
📝 What we created
The main result of the course is a library of six educational board games, each one designed, tested and refined by a team of participants. All of them are public and can be downloaded for free from the Playground of our Companion App, together with their rules and print-ready materials, so that any youth worker can print them and play them with a group. Each game was documented with the Game Design Document template that participants had received on the second day, which includes the learning goal, the rules, the debrief questions, the Youthpass competences linked to the game and a playtest plan.
Although they are very different, the six games share three features: they put young people in the position of someone else or of a different version of themselves, they create a tension that makes the players talk, and they always end with a debrief, a conversation led by a facilitator to turn the experience of playing into learning. Here is a closer look at each of them.
💥ONE LAST CHANCE – End of the World Team
At a glance: role-playing game · 10 minutes per scenario · ages 16+
One Last Chance is a role-playing game where young people step into real-life roles and work through situations they actually face: conflicts between friends, difficult conversations, social pressure. Every player receives a role card with specific traits and limits, and the group chooses a scenario card that describes a tense situation and a shared mission. After a few minutes to prepare their roles, the players act out the scene for about ten minutes, or until they solve the problem, while a facilitator helps and guides the debrief afterwards.
The central tension is that players must balance what their character needs and can do with the shared goal of the group. Scenarios are set in everyday places such as a university, a party or an office, and can include characters such as a challenged person, a disruptive person or a helper. Youth workers can also create new scenarios based on the needs of their own group. The game aims to develop empathy, self-confidence and non-violent communication, and the print-ready files include the board, role resources, secret goals, crisis cards and instructions. The debrief asks, among other things: what choice changed the result, and what would you change in your daily communication?
🐺Fake News Town – Werewolf team
At a glance: social deduction game · 6 to 20 players · 30–60 minutes · ages 16–30
Fake News Town takes the classic structure of games like Werewolf or Mafia and uses it to train critical thinking. Players are citizens of a town with a hidden problem: some of them are disinformers. Each night the disinformers choose someone to eliminate, and a Fact-Checker can secretly ask the moderator about one player's role but cannot say it openly; they have to hint at it or keep it secret. During the day the group debates, analyses what others say and do, and votes in secret on who to eliminate.
What makes the game special are the missions. The moderator gives players small missions based on four scenarios about fake news, and players who complete them earn tokens that can be used to save themselves from elimination, or to save another player, even if that means taking a risk. This creates the key moment of the game: the decision to spend your points to protect a friend. The game ends when all disinformers are eliminated or when there are fewer citizens than disinformers. According to its designers, players practise critical thinking, debate and communication, including non-verbal communication such as gestures and looks, and the debrief asks whether their gut feeling told them something different from their mind or their team.
👞 The Shoes – Dialogue & Empathy Team
At a glance: role-playing board game · 3 to 6 players · 45–60 minutes · ages 16+
In The Shoes, you do not play as yourself. Before the game starts, each player rolls a die four times to create a character, deciding their age, relationship status, financial situation and social background. From then on, you must live as that person. On each turn, a four-sided die decides the type of card you draw (Action, Emotion, Backstory or Deep Questions), and you answer it as your character would: how do they feel, what do they do and what do they say?
The other players then vote on how true and honest your answer felt using coins of 1, 20, 50 and 100, and the total becomes your "empathy points". This creates the main dilemma of the game: give a simple, safe answer to collect a few points, or take a risk with a deep, emotional answer that may earn many more. There is no game board; as the designers put it, the map is inside people's minds. The cards are inspired by everyday figures such as an overworked cashier, an estranged relative, an authority figure or a successful rival from the past, and by ideas such as whether money can buy happiness. The game aims to break down stereotypes, encourage dialogue between cultures and help players understand how age, relationships and money change people's daily choices. Because the character is fictional, players can talk about difficult topics without having to reveal anything about their own lives.
👺 Unravel Yourself – Self Expression and Creativity Team
At a glance: card game · 2 to 8 players · 60–90 minutes · young people with intermediate English
Unravel Yourself is an invitation to slow down and to talk about ourselves. Players sit together around three decks of cards. The Self-reflection cards contain personal questions for one player, who can choose not to answer. The Me and Others cards ask everyone a question, so that the group gets to know each other. The Creative Expression cards give everybody a task, such as drawing, making a sound or writing a poem, to complete within a time limit; afterwards, each player explains why they created what they did.
The key moment of the game happens when a player shows their drawing and the others listen and ask about its meaning, creating a moment of discovery and a deeper connection. There are no winners or losers and no obstacles, and safety comes first: any card that feels too personal can be skipped. The game is designed to help young people express their feelings, reflect on themselves, practise active listening and create bonds within a group. Its designers plan to test different levels of depth for the cards and to use dice to decide the way of expression, such as writing or singing.
🫂 You're Good Enough! – You Are Enough Team
At a glance: cooperative leadership game · 4 or more players · 60–120 minutes · ages 12+
You're Good Enough! asks every player to take a turn as the Leader, the person who has to coordinate the team through four challenges. In Silent Charades, the leader must get their team to guess a scene using only body language. In The Blind Maze, the team forms a "human snake", holding each other's shoulders and blindfolded except for the leader, who guides them with their voice through a maze drawn on the floor with tape. In One-Word Story, players tell a story one word at a time, while the leader secretly steers it towards a hidden word. In the Human Hard Drive, the leader memorises a sequence of ten cards for sixty seconds and then directs the team to put them in order without looking.
The game has three rounds: random challenges, strategic choices where each leader picks a challenge they have not led yet, and an optional race between teams. Its main rule is that everybody has to lead at least once, even those who are not used to it, and that is the point: by succeeding in high-pressure scenarios, players gain confidence in their ability to lead and discover different leadership styles, which is also the debrief question: which challenge suited your leadership style best? The game is suitable for team-building workshops and Erasmus+ groups.
🗣️ What Now – The Social Roleplay Game – We Agree Team
At a glance: role-playing game · 10 minutes per scenario · ages 16+
What Now is a close relative of One Last Chance and builds on the same engine: players receive a role card and a scenario card, prepare their characters and then discuss and act to solve a shared problem, with a facilitator who ensures a safe space for exploring difficult topics and leads the debrief. The scenarios drawn from daily life, such as conflicts with friends, awkward conversations or social pressure, are presented without a board, and the game allows youth workers to add new scenarios according to the needs of their group.
Its designers emphasise dialogue and cooperation: conflict is used to build understanding rather than to win. The game aims at empathy, self-confidence and non-violent communication, and the print-ready material includes the instructions, scenario and role cards, and the stickers for the box.
And beyond the games
The games are not the only things the course left behind. The Games Are No Joke Companion App https://games-are-no-joke.web.app/ was developed by Arte Diem Calabria and used throughout the training as a digital support for the participants. It includes ten short theory modules, from "What is a game?" and the magic circle to the MDA framework, core loops, games for dialogue and polarisation, paper prototyping and playtesting, each with a lesson, model cards and a podcast recorded by participants. It also includes a Prototype Lab with a step-by-step guide to designing your own game, a reports section with a video and a summary of each day of the training, and a few digital mini-games created to practise design concepts. The app is open to anyone and is a way to follow the process of the course in the same order in which it was lived.
The Game Design Toolkit written collectively on the last day brings together the lessons on mechanics, youth engagement strategies and case studies of the games developed. https://games-are-no-joke.web.app/theory
The podcasts and video reports recorded during the week are available on our YouTube channel and show the learning process in the voices of the participants. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWXAb2JNV9SpAyW0k-ym14KsMPzYw5uuc 🎙️ (podcasts)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWXAb2JNV9SoK018YuSfwQQWVZ4qxxq3L 🎥 (Video reports)
Also a testimonials video in which the participants shared what the journey has meant to them, skills gained and connections built along the way
A collection of instagram highlighted stories and publications, saved on our project’s profile, capturing daily moments of the whole journey. Also includes daily reels, a look into the intercultural nights and snaps that capture the creative learning process. https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTgzNDg5ODMwMDAxODQz?story_media_id=3884004406031348745&cplk=MWl5eWlrZ2RkMDhwaw==
Last but not least all the photos from the project are collected, published and shared in a photo album hosted on Facebook, containing and documenting all phases of the project. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1104392805677339&type=3
Games Are No Joke also drew the attention of the regional press in Calabria. Several local outlets, including MoveOn Calabria and IlDispaccio, published stories about the course. They presented games as a European language to respond to disinformation and radicalisation, and described a Erasmus+ workshop in Filadelfia on game design that teaches how to educate through play and dialogue. This coverage gave the project visibility beyond our own channels and showed a wider audience how youth work can tackle current social challenges in a creative and participatory way.
🧳 What participants took home
The final evaluation confirmed what we had felt in the room. In the official Participant Reports, everyone said they would recommend the experience to a colleague, everyone received a Youthpass, and all reported experimenting with new learning practices and strengthening their professional network. Participants also stated that they had learned more about Europe and European values and gained a better understanding of diversity in society.
Asked how they would use what they learned, the most common answer was simple and exactly what we had hoped for: designing, creating and testing games with the young people they work with. Others mentioned making their workshops more engaging, using the communication, teamwork and leadership skills they had practised, applying new digital tools, sharing what they learned with colleagues and involving young people in the design of activities. In the open comments, participants highlighted the quality of the organisation and facilitation, the variety of activities spread over the week, the value of reflection and feedback and the diversity of ages in the group, from teenagers to people in their forties, and several of them expressed the wish to repeat the experience.
But the story of Games Are No Joke did not stay in Filadelfia. During and after the course, participants and partner organisations took it back to their own communities and channels. Many participants shared their experience on their personal social media accounts, with photos, reels and short updates published on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X, with posts coming from participants in Türkiye, Romania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, France and Serbia. They followed a simple shared protocol: tagging Arte Diem Calabria and their national partner, mentioning the project and Erasmus+, and linking to the public material. Their posts reached friends, colleagues and young people who had never heard of the course, and showed in a personal and direct way what an Erasmus+ training can offer.
The partner organisations also took part, using their own channels and networks to present the results to their communities and to share the games, the podcasts and the Companion App with colleagues, volunteers and young people. Together, these actions multiplied the reach of the project and gave the games a first life outside the training room, which is where they are meant to be used. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DX1n9R7iV7h/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&vrfl=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==&srtk=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== https://www.instagram.com/p/DYHAWIDjSqB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&psln=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==&srtk=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
⁉️ And now?
A training course does not end when the last bus leaves. The games, the Toolkit and the Companion App were designed to be reused, adapted and improved by other youth workers, and each partner organisation carries the method into its own community, testing the games with young people, training colleagues and presenting the results to other organisations.
If you work with young people and want to try these games, or to design your own, explore the Companion App and get in touch: we would love to hear how they work in your context.
🫶 Thank you
Games Are No Joke was possible thanks to the commitment of the partner organisations that selected and supported the participants:
A very special thank you goes to the 🏛️ community of Filadelfia. For a week, the town opened its streets, squares and shops to an international group of youth workers who walked around with notebooks, asking questions and looking at everyday life as if it were a game board. The stories, places and details that you shared with us, often without even knowing it, became the raw material of our games, and your welcome made us feel at home from the very first day. Games Are No Joke is, in many ways, also your story: a small town in Calabria that became the starting point for ideas that will now travel to seven countries and beyond. Thank you for your hospitality, your curiosity and your patience with a group that was learning, testing and making noise in your town. We also want to thank the towns of Tropea and Pizzo, which welcomed us during the study visit and showed the group, with their streets, landscapes and everyday life, how a place can inspire new ideas.
A heartfelt thank you to 🏰 Residenza L’Antico Borgo Hotel, and in particular Francesco, “the King of the Castle”, and his team, who hosted the training course. Their warm welcome, their willingness to adapt to our needs and their practical help made every day of the week easier. A comfortable and friendly place matters for inclusion and for the well-being of a group, and thanks to you participants felt safe and at home, and were able to focus fully on the programme.
🇪🇺 Games Are No Joke was co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, with the support of the Italian National Agency for Youth (Agenzia Italiana per la Gioventù). We are thankful for this opportunity, which allowed youth workers from seven countries to take part in a quality non-formal learning experience, strengthen their competences in game design and facilitation, and live European cooperation in practice, an experience that now reaches the young people they work with.
Project code: 2025-1-IT03-KA153-YOU-000303546
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