The second meeting of the DEMOGAMES project took place in Zurich on 14-15 February. At the invitation of Demokrative, representatives of the five partner organisations met to plan the development of educational games on the topic of democracy. In the run-up we had collected game sketches and evaluated them according to various criteria. In Zurich, we deepened the discussion based on inputs and discussions on topics such as game mechanisms, understanding of democracy and learning goals. We set ourselves the ambitious goal that the games should work well and promote competences for a democratic culture, which are described in the Council of Europe's reference framework.

Various international teams are now working on the further development of individual game ideas. The first prototypes are to be tested as early as autumn,
when the next project meeting and a workshop for young people on the topics of teaching democracy and game development is on the agenda, this time in Spain. Call for application for participation in the workshop will follow on this page.

DARE published a new textbook/toolkit on Populism, Post-factualism and Radicalisation and its relation to Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC) work with young people.
The publication [» “STEPS – Survival Toolkit for EDC in Post-factual Societies”] includes case reports and policy analysis on the consequences of right-populist and right-wing agenda setting on EDC work to discuss where pedagogical work with youth is concretely affected on a practical level: what practical concepts and approaches exist to work on these issues? The publication includes policy recommendations, expert texts, and a collection of tools and methods.
Our guest contribution 'Using (non-digital) games to teach and learn about Democracy' (authors: Rebecca Welge, Saskia Ruth-Lovell, Robert Lovell, p 93f.) shares insights from different activities, which are based on (analogous) games to foster education about and for democracy.

The [» European network DARE] advocates for independent human rights and democratic citizenship education. Demokrative is a member of the Democracy and Human Rights Education in Europe (DARE) Network since 2018.

The  project 'Analog and Digital Game-Based-Learning Tools for Youth Work', DEMOGAMES (Erasmus+ KA2 – Youth in Action, 2019-2022) is based on the didactic approach of game-based learning and applies it to teaching young citizens on democracy. The main outcome of DEMOGAMES will be a “democracy game box” (D-BOX), which will include a set of analogue and digital democracy games that practitioners (youth workers, trainers, and teachers) can use to teach democracy from different perspectives and to engage young people in a participatory way.
Demokrative is the Swiss cooperation partner in the DEMOGAMES project, which follows on from our Lets' Play Democracy Barometer project.

The project team will create a prototype for an analogue democracy game based on insights from the Democracy Barometer.
At the end of the project, the game documents including rules will be available as online print & play templates. In addition, a short handout with recommendations on how the prototype can best be embedded in teaching formats will be published online. The project leaders are our members Saskia Ruth-Lovell and Rebecca Welge, and Robert Lovell. The creation of the democracy game is financially supported by the Center for Democracy in Aarau. The project is also supported by the Research Center for Democratic Innovations of the Goethe-University Frankfurt. The game will be applied in teaching in the winter semester 2018/19 at the Goethe-University Frankfurt.