This is a new and innovative project which is based on the need to enhance the youth work skills of young people and youth workers in a multi-media context. The world of multimedia changes rapidly. Youth workers need to understand and capture this environment to ensure relevance and ongoing enhancement of the young people they work with. In turn, young people need to be supported to use their skills in this virtual world of communication to enhance and not isolate - to develop associations with each other both virtually and also in real time. This project will bring three groups of young people together within a moderated online progressive gaming environment to develop technical and collaboration skills as well as encouraging engagement with and an understanding of the communities in which they live. Participants will work together to locate, design and construct the town, researching and negotiating the various considerations and dilemmas inherent in such a project. The work will be undertaken within their country teams and in collaboration with the teams in the other two countries. Participants will base the designs on replicating buildings in their own towns, thus encouraging them to get out and learn about their own built environment. They will also be encouraged to research the housing of vulnerable groups, refugees, travellers, disabled people and the homeless within our communities. The project will then expand in year three creating a multiplier effect across the partner countries as 3 new groups are introduced to the concept and encouraged to create their own versions of youth town bringing the project directly to another 30 participants and 6 youth workers, in each country. Towards the final stages of the project, once the platform and the methodology has been established, each participant will be encouraged to invite 10 of their friends to visit youth town and to learn about the project, this will directly access 300 people in each country. The final conference will be an opportunity to launch the methodology to youth work organisations and other relevant stakeholders. A community of youth work practitioners will be encouraged through the project website as will interaction between a growing number of young players on the games platform and the social media.The training methodology will be:Based on non-formal education principles
Encourage self-directed learning
Include reflection
Rely on peer-to-peer learning and sharing
Incorporate experiential learningDirect accredited training programme through LIT RATIONALEThis project addresses the fact that increasingly young people are spending significant amounts of their time playing online games and investing much of their creativity, their personal and collective identities in computer gameMcGonigal points out that, “every single day, gamers worldwide spend a collective 30 million hours working on world of warcraft (the largest global MMORPG)” McGonigal (2011;60). Statistics for Minecraft, while not available would be consistent with this scale. According to Ceclie Peasce this intensive, prolonged, interaction can generate a strong sense of community and collective identity which she describes as a ’CoLiberation’, Pearce (2006). This ability to play with, and assist friends in such a casual and accessible manner builds the social connections of players and, according to McGonigal (2011:87), helps address the decline in social capita within “real world” communities.This project will seek to address the prolonged and sometimes obsessive exposure by young people to unmoderated negative behaviour in games by designing a game based on youth work values and approaches. This project seeks to address the decline in civic engagement by young people and seeks to implement the recommendations of recent European Commission JRC research on the use of games for social inclusionTrasnational Rationale, The transnational element in this project strengthens its appeal and benefits to young people and enhances its potential as a youth work tool across the EU