Key Highlights

Empowering Youth through Game-Making

EPIC-WE is a Horizon Europe-funded initiative that empowers young people to imagine, create and exchange cultural values and heritage through game-making. The programme collaborates with international researchers including CHEFsteering member Kim Holflod (associate professor at UCC).

As written on its webpage, EPIC-WE is more than a project, as it empowers young people to shape European culture but also their own futures. Through game-making as a cultural practice, the project highlights how games can engage new voices and contribute to shared European values. The project explores new models for cultural collaboration and youth participation, developing cultural processes and design tools tailored to game creation.

Throughout the project, cultural game jams have been taking place in Aarhus (DK), Hilversum (NL) and Óbidos (PT). These events brought together young people, universities, creative industries and cultural institutions to co-create games inspired by European cultural heritage.

Metamorphosis – a cultural game co-created by youth and designers

One of the cultural games developed through EPIC-WE is Metamorphosis, created in collaboration between young participants from the Cultural Game Jam at ARoS Art Museum and the game studio Mothworks. The game invites players into an empowering exploration of ‘the freedom to choose who you are’ drawing inspiration from iconic works at ARoS by Olafur Eliasson, Andy Warhol and Sif Itona Westerberg. The result is a vibrant game world filled with prisms, colours and playful engagements with identity and transformation.

Developed jointly by Team Puzlerne and Mothworks, the final game demonstrates the unique synergy between youth creativity and professional game design. Metamorphosis exemplifies how young voices, cultural heritage and European values can merge to form new cultural expressions through the EPIC-WE framework.

If you want to try the game, feel free to download it here.

Lastly, EPIC-WE warmly invites you to take part in the final conference. You can register here.

The conference will bring partners together to present main findings, celebrate the achievements and reflect on the impact the project has had.

We congratulate the EPIC-WE team on nearing the successful conclusion of their work and look forward to the final conference.

Learn More

For further information about CHEF and for free membership registration, visit the Centre for Higher Education Futures website.

To arrange a visit, offer a seminar or publish in the working-paper series, please contact CHEF’s Co-directors, Professor Susan Wright (suwr@edu.au.dk) and Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen (ssbe@edu.au.dk) at the Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University.