Next Library Satelite Seoul 2026

22.05.2026

Seoul brought together librarians, creatives, educators, and changemakers from more than 25 countries during Next Library Satellite Seoul 2026, organized by Dokk1 in partnership with the SeeArt Foundation.

As part of the event, the Active Citizenship: Participation Game was presented internationally through the Erasmus+ partnership between BoostYourThinking and Lier Library (Norway). The prototype invited participants to explore societal challenges through fictional personas, participation barriers, and civic engagement tools, using dialogue and reflection as its core methods.

Participants described the experience as relevant, engaging, and thought-provoking. The feedback highlighted the game’s potential to foster meaningful conversations about participation, inclusion, and active citizenship.

Focus Group | University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), Norway

27.04.2026

This focus group brought together student teachers, a professor, and a representative from the county library to explore the game in a higher education context. Held at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), the session highlighted the game’s strong potential to foster creativity, empathy, participation, and meaningful discussion, while also creating a safer and more equal space for dialogue between teachers and students. Participants valued the absence of “right answers,” which made it easier to contribute, build ideas together, and reflect on personal attitudes and social issues. At the same time, the session highlighted the importance of a well-prepared game master, clearer boundaries, and stronger safeguarding tools, especially when the game is used in educational settings where vulnerable or controversial topics may emerge. The design was received very positively, with suggestions mainly focused on improving readability and adapting the game to different age groups and levels of maturity.

Project Stand | Democracy Conference 2026, Oslo, Norway

24.04.2026

Lier Library presented the Active Citizenship: Participation Game at the Democracy Conference 2026( Demokratikonferansen 2026 ) through a project stand that introduced the game to participants working across research, education, culture, public administration, and civil society. The conference offered a particularly relevant setting for the project, as it focused on major democratic challenges such as authoritarian shifts, attacks on science and knowledge institutions, polarization, and the growing fragmentation of public discourse. In this context, the game stood out as a practical and creative tool to help libraries foster dialogue, empathy, and active citizenship in response to the pressures facing democratic life today. 

Focus Group | Loures Municipal Library, Portugal

06.12.2025

Held at Loures Municipal Library, with 12 participants from backgrounds including libraries, social support, communication, education, and civic life, this session highlighted the game’s ability to generate debate, collective reflection, and perspective-taking. Participants drew clear connections between the game and real citizenship issues, particularly through discussions around youth voice, institutional power, and democratic participation. The role cards were seen as especially promising, although their current visual design weakened their impact during play. The group also stressed the need for clearer framing, stronger guidance for autonomous use, a better-structured board, and a continued commitment to keeping the game collaborative rather than competitive.

Focus Group | Spilloteket, Oslo, Norway

02.12.2025

This focus group was carried out with an open prototype-testing community in Oslo made up of adults who regularly meet to try new games and provide feedback. Participants recognized clear potential in the project, especially for educational purposes and for use in libraries, and responded positively to the color coding and the overall concept. At the same time, because this was a group experienced in game testing, they offered particularly sharp feedback on structure and usability. They called for less text, clearer boundaries, a more defined goal and target audience, and a stronger balance between free flow and clear rules. They also questioned the need for the board in its current form and suggested more practical ways to support storytelling, turn-taking, and facilitation.

Focus Group | Montemor-o-Novo Municipal Library, Portugal

29.11.2025

The focus group in Montemor-o-Novo reinforced the game’s value as a tool for exploring real participation processes rather than simply playing through mechanics. Participants highlighted its openness, flexibility, and storytelling potential, as well as its ability to stimulate critical thinking around inequality, misinformation, extremism, and civic barriers. The session also showed how powerfully the game can resonate in schools, youth work, municipalities, and intergenerational settings. Key suggestions included making the board more intuitive, allowing greater flexibility in the use of cards, clarifying the role of the game master, and adapting the tool to different levels of group experience and real-world contexts.

Focus Group | Pombal Municipal Library, Portugal

22.11.2025

This first Portuguese focus group brought together 11 participants from a wide range of backgrounds, including library professionals, local decision-makers, a sociologist, a nurse, a writer, a photographer, and even a 12-year-old student. The session revealed the game’s strong potential to foster dialogue, empathy, critical thinking, and social awareness in an inclusive and accessible way. Participants particularly valued the sense of equality in conversation, the game’s clear structure, and its ability to create a safe space for reflection. At the same time, they highlighted the need to improve the order of the cards, clarify the instructions, strengthen the role system, and redesign the board so it feels less fragmented and more dynamic.

Focus Group | Horten Library, Norway

19.11.2025

Held at Horten Library, this focus group demonstrated the game’s strong potential to foster dialogue, collaborative storytelling, and democratic reflection in a library setting. Participants described the experience as fun, meaningful, and socially engaging, emphasizing the value of hearing different perspectives and exploring social challenges through character and barrier cards. The session also reinforced the project’s potential as a tool for libraries, schools, and intergenerational dialogue. Feedback focused on simplifying the language, clarifying the game’s purpose and target groups, rethinking the winner-loser logic, strengthening facilitation guidance, and redesigning the board so it works more effectively as a visual support rather than as a traditional game board.

Focus group Terminalen 4, Lier

17.11.2025

This first Norwegian focus group brought together participants from libraries, culture, local government, and civil society to test an early version of the game in a collaborative setting. The session confirmed the project’s relevance and highlighted the value of involving people from the outside, fostering a strong sense of genuine participation in the game’s development. Participants appreciated the quality of the discussions, the group’s active engagement, and the way playfulness helped unlock creativity and fresh ideas. At the same time, they pointed to the need for more humor, clearer role descriptions, a more defined game master function, and stronger storytelling support to make the experience feel less like a workshop and more like a game.

Online sessions

16th october

23rd october

17th january

The aim of the session was to test the first prototype of the Active Citizenship: Participation Game and evaluate its overall structure. Participants were given a random combination of game cards and invited to explore how the cards could be connected through storytelling. The online participants came from across Europe and represented a variety of professional and disciplinary backgrounds. Their feedback was collected through a structured evaluation process and used to further refine and improve the game design.