On Friday and Saturday, June 13-14, EPIC-WE participated in the European Youth Event (EYE) 2025 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg
We are pleased to share a recap of EPIC-WE’s participation in the European Youth Event, which took place at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. This bi-yearly gathering brought together thousands of young people from across Europe, and beyond. They travelled to Strasbourg to exchange ideas, meet fellow young Europeans, and use their voice to shape the future of the European Union.
EPIC-WE held two interactive panels, which were structured around three interrelated themes:
1. Youth as Value-Sensitive Game-Makers
2. Youth as Empowered Culture-Makers
3. Youth in Transformative Partnerships
Together with youth co-creators, researchers, and cultural professionals, we reflected on the role of young people as agents of change when designing games through and about culture.
Speakers included:
Lea, member of the Aarhus Youth Advisory Board and game jam participant.
Kim, lead of the Aarhus Hub.
Elena, member of the Hilversum Youth Advisory Board and game jam participant.
Maaike, member of the Hilversum Hub and representative of Sound & Vision Museum.
Inês, member of the Advisory Board and researcher in the Óbidos Hub.
Maria, researcher in the Óbidos Hub.
Key topics of our presentation included the panel’s first-hand experience in negotiating European values, identity, and belonging, the power of cultural game jams as inclusive and participatory spaces for youth, the transversal inclusion of youth members for transformative ecosystems in the Hubs, insights from our Youth Advisory Board members on working with institutions in a horizontal capacity, and finally, reflections on how game-making shifts the tradition of cultural institutions into co-creators of meaning with young people. A live Mentimeter word cloud invited the audience to reflect on youth empowerment through gaming. In addition to the panels, EPIC-WE participated in two sessions at the Advocacy Corner. Here, youth members were able to directly answer the questions of interested EYE participants.
For us, highlights of attending EYE included the opportunity to chat directly with youth members about games at the Advocacy Corner, getting in touch with similar initiatives to find synergies in our work, and sharing moments with the EPIC-WE international team.
” I thought it was inspiring to hear the opinions of the audience during the interactive part of our panel. They offered a lot of great suggestions and new perspectives. I also really enjoyed spending time with the rest of the EPIC team and meeting members from the other hubs!”
— Lea, Aarhus Hub
We are proud to have received such positive feedback on our project, and we thank participants for their feedback. Your recommendations will directly inform the next stages of our work. We extend our sincere thanks to the organisers of EYE2025, our project partners, and all the young people who engaged with us during the event. In their curiosity, creativity, and critical reflections we recognise the values that EPIC-WE seeks to promote, and we are very excited about the ever-growing EPIC community.
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