We are excited to announce that Game Research Lab is partnering with larp practitioners and academics in a new EU-funded project in Horizon Europe, Larpocracy: Developing Spaces for Deliberation and Democratic Skills through Role-playing. Larpocracy aims to promote democratic engagement and political expression through live-action role-playing (larp). The project, which runs from January 2025 to December 2027, involves university partners: Uppsala University, Tampere University, and University of Greenwich. The universities are partnering with four larp and art production companies: Europe 4 Youth, Larpifiers, Chaos League, and ZU-UK. The project is coordinated by Uppsala University.
The project addresses the declining engagement in traditional democracy and the limitations of social media in fostering civil discourse. Using larp as a platform, the project hopes to create inclusive and democratic social spaces, both online and offline, where young people can develop important democratic skills such as deliberation. The project will investigate the effectiveness of larps in cultivating these skills, explore festival spaces as potential sites for future democratic skill-building, and use larp-like activities in an art-based intervention with underprivileged communities in Belem, Brazil as a case study. The goal is to provide recommendations for designers and policy-makers on how best to leverage larp as a tool for democratic engagement.
