Climate Change as a Game: (Co)Designing with Children the Landscape of the Future

Today’s new generations, and in particular young people, will face consistent landscape changes during their existence. Can we create consciousness in young generations of how climate change will modify landscapes and cities? Can we involve children and university students in co-designing the landscape considering climate change? Can we develop new educational methods and co-designed techniques for primary and tertiary education?

This presentation will introduce the Comenius Fellowship results for didactical and pedagogical innovation—an invitation to act collectively to save our planet Earth and to develop a positive attitude and emotional knowledge in contact with nature to tackle the climate transition.

Starting from exploring different forms of games, the project aims to educate and engage younger generations in climate change issues. The game becomes the tool through which students can acquire knowledge, observe the world from different perspectives and ultimately imagine and transform the future world. Games are ‘designed experiences’ in which players can learn through doing and being, rather than absorbing information in traditional educational formats. By assuming various roles and perspectives, the educational experience of play triggers emotions that help to acquire new awareness, develop a more complex vision of the future, and finally make decisions.

In the project, students from the landscape, architecture, and urban disciplines explored the past, present, and future of an assigned landscape, adopting the concepts of play, design, and climate change. Later, students themselves became ‘actors of change’ involving children in co-designing and co-creating a collective outdoor climate game on-site.