MONDOPOLY
Together with the youth department of the local council and the youth organization we organized “Mondopoly”—an intergenerational game. The main purpose of the game is to work against stereotypes by bringing together people who wouldn’t ordinarily meet. The local town becomes the “board” of this “board game.” One hundred pupils went out in groups of 4, armed with paper maps and an address (without a name), knocked on doors and rang door bells. They met 25 different people from the area and found out that our local mayor isn’t just a politician, but also a dog lover, a philosopher, a sports man, and a lover of everything English. The game happened on one day only and was documented by a group of teenagers. To fully capture what the kids learned on the day, we’ll organize a writing workshop with a published author in a couple of weeks’ time. From the workshops, we’ll release a publication at the end of November.
More info and photos from this project: http://mondopoly-lustenau.at
CROSSING BORDERS
Our local town is based on the Swiss border, but the Rhine forms a very strong border between Austria and Switzerland. There’s a town just under 30km upstream that borders Lichtenstein in the same manner. W*ORT teamed up with a theater in this town, and a regional organization for literature and has organized a cross-border project involving four schools: 2 Austrian, 1 Swiss and 1 Lichtenstein. The aim is to compare family stories across the border and to write them down. Two authors will accompany the project and guide the pupils through the writing project, which will culminate in a publication.
This project will start at the end of November, check W*ORT’s website for updates here.