Participatory design games for citizenship education. A public space approach with children

Citizenship education plays a key role in urban societies, as it supports the construction of inclusive, sustainable and healthy communities, promoting values of responsibility, activism, inclusivity, diversity, collaboration. Civic and Citizenship courses in schools’ curricula worldwide gives positive results, but critical barriers can be noted, including: the difficulty for children to understand complex theoretical and abstract notions. Some scholars suggest that education is more effective when democratic processes are experienced by children through decision-making, including through the use of games. Participatory design strategies for the public space, together with placemaking actions, have been promoted since the 1970s to engage adults in decision making processes, with the objective of collecting proposals on urban transformation, strengthening communities, educating to citizenship, with values of inclusivity, diversity, sustainability, activating the citizen agency by encouraging activism. Participatory design strategies can benefit from the use of gamification strategies and serious game approaches to achieve audience development, engagement and conflict resolution. This research appraises the possibility to use participatory design games, focused on the public space, as tools for citizenship education of children (aged 5-12). Three case studies developed in Spain and Italy are presented, based on the use of digital and analogue interfaces. Case studies are assessed and compared on their capacity to stimulate interest in children through time, foster interaction and active collaboration between peers, educate to conflict resolution, Educate to inclusivity and diversity, promote behavioural change towards sustainability, collect Data on desires in relation to the public space. Results suggest that participatory design games focused are successful as educational tools, regardless of the real implementation of the design solutions.