R-FORCE: THE ALLIANCE OF CHANGE
Basic information
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Project Description
R-force is the new innovative board game that uses trivia, movement and technology to educate, stimulate and activate children and others on environmental issues. The game creates a physical community but also a virtual one thanks to the website where people can stay updated and exchange ideas and projects. They can find the files to self-design the game, learning in this way the art of reuse and also developing their manual skills and creativity.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
R-force is the alliance to protect the environment. A board game that allows everyone to learn what are the possibilities to live our environment in a respectful way and develop new systems to fight for its survival.
There are questions about materials, recycling, reuse and tips to improve your habits. The game is connected to a platform that allows it to keep evolving in step with the world and be constantly ready for action.
We want to look for ways in which we can be useful with our behaviors and make activism an habit. The best way to do this is starting from when you are a child. Play belongs to children; it contributes to their physical, cognitive and relational well-being and to their exploration of reality. More specifically, from ages 6-7 to 11, rule-based games are very useful for relationship development and cognitive development.
The new generation has a very close connection with technology. It often happens that, locked in the virtual world, they don't learn to experience the real one. We wanted to introduce an app into the game to allow children to be on both sides of the world: the technological one, scanning and analyzing materials, and the real one, looking at the concrete correspondence.
The game is designed completely in paper and cardboard, specifically for the prototype we used a waste cardboard from a company. The goal is to use the discarded materials before they undergo the recycling process by giving them a new life.
In this way and thanks to the sharing of design files, it is possible to apply this process anywhere and in any situation developing also the creative faculties. The game thus becomes inclusive as it is shared.
Key objectives for sustainability
R-force is a game that deals with the theme of sustainability and for the creation of the game itself uses an approach that is sustainable.
One of the first goals is that all the materials employed for the implementation are second-hand: used materials to which a second life is given before being thrown away and recycled. In addition to a matter of sustainability, the idea of using recovered materials aims to stimulate awareness that, before throwing something away, however much it may go through the recycling process, it is important to try to reuse it.
Reusing doesn't mean creating a bad or ruined product: working in the right way you can create something beautiful and attractive, as in the case of the R-force game.
Moreover, the basic material we chose to use is cardboard: on the one hand because it is a widely available material and easy to work with, especially for children, but also because in a reality, such as that of Milan, the problem of the cumulation of packaging is not to be underestimated. By producing this game, therefore, it's possible to reuse a waste material, but also help with the problem of cardboard disposal, helping to find another function for it. In addition, cardboard is an environmentally friendly and recyclable material.
Regarding the online version of the game, instead, anyone can download the files to design their own game and using their readily available waste material, giving new life to something that would otherwise have been thrown away.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
R-force is a game that creates an experience of sharing of knowledge, ideas and actions by forming an active community around it.
It gives people the opportunity to feel part of a group that works together to protect the environment by encouraging individual actions in this field. The experience of the game makes a complex and delicate topic, such as the climate emergency, pleasant and light and helps to improve the quality of relationships between kids but also within adults.
Working with second-hand materials aims to stimulate a new vision of aesthetics that does not enhance the new as the only expression of beauty but stimulates the research of beauty in the reality that surrounds us. This activates a creative process that develops the mind and can bring to the maximum potential an object both aesthetically and functionally.
The obsession with the new has brought huge environmental problems. The game wants to educate the new generations to find satisfaction in designing more than in the purchase of something, enhancing the efforts of self-design rather than the simple act of buying.
Moreover, standardized customization of the industrial system is exceeded by seeking an individual taste and the ability to create beauty. We must be aware that our Western society is characterised by overproduction and we must learn to have a better experience of things that exist rather than create new ones.
Key objectives for inclusion
The game is a moment of encounter, where we all meet together without distinction of sex, ethnicity or religion, a moment of socialization, where we also acquire rules. Playing is also integration, because we remember that the rules are applied to everyone in the same way.
R-Force encompasses all this by sinking the themes of environmental sustainability and addressing them to the whole world, to all children and all parents or teachers who come with them. You can play it at home with friends, at school as a teaching method or as an input for children's workshop in leisure centre.
The possibility of having a digital community as well as physical allows you to break down barriers and get to distant places by observing how people deals with this topic in other places. The platform allows the sharing of new questions that can be added into the game so that both experts and children can express themselves with new curiosities, doubts or ideas.
Inclusivity is also economical because the R-force has low production costs, thanks to the exclusive use of cardboard, but above all because it is possible to redesign it at home at zero cost.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
R-force is an alliance that unites multiple people and multiple values, such as sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion, under one mission.
First of all, it is a game that tackles sustainability in a well-rounded view, starting from the design of the game to the issues addressed. The game can be made using only recovered materials, specifically paper and cardboard: in this way it presents a sustainable ethic even before you start playing.
The game also covers various issues related to climate change and waste materials and more, in a funny and innovative way. It is a board game that has three interchangeable roles: one more dynamic, searching for materials and how to sort them, and two more theoretical, where you answer quizzes on recycling, reusing and environmental issues. The aim is to get first to the end of the board, full of unexpected, questions and actions, to become thus officially a member of the R-Force alliance.
It is possible to build and customize the game, downloading all the necessary files directly from the website. Self-design gives birth to a new aesthetic taste, which exceeds the standard canons of society.
It is an extremely inclusive game from different points of view: it is a game designed initially for children but also suitable for families, teachers or experts, thanks to the possibilities to share news, information, ideas, doubts and development for the game in the platform online. In this way the game creates a shared intergenerational experience of exchange and growth.
It can be considered an important example for the future of games, because it develops a new system of production that allows to communities growing in harmony with the world around them.
