Spēļu Fest
From 15 to 21 February, Kaņepes Kultūras centrs, in collaboration with the Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Riga City Council will host Spēļu Fest.
Over a period of 6 days, Spēļu Fest will form the framework for; online workshops, discussions, lectures and other events dedicated to computer games, board and other genre games, as well as gamification.
The festival will offer its participants a program that focuses on the social dimensions in video- and boardgames. The event will provide the opportunity for experts to knowledge exchange and network amongst each other, but will also be open to any member of the public that is interested in the subject. The focus will not only be on creating a platform for gamers, but also on opening a dialogue about social problems such as sexism, racism, drug abuse, stereotypes, and equality in relation to the gaming world.
In connection with Spēļu Fest the Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is hosting two workshops, to find out more about these follow the links below:
Minecrafting Cities – Workshop
The Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would like to say a warm thank you to our co-organisers Kaņepes Kultūras centrs and Riga City Council for a great cooperation with this online workshop we co-hosted together, within the frameworks of Spēļu Fest.
Please read on to find highlights from some of the events from Spēļu Fest, that the Danish Cultural Institute either co-hosted or co-organised.
Spēļu Fest consisted of different online events, where the Danish Cultural Institute co-hosted the events GenderGames and Minecrafting Cities, and co-organised the events Round Table Discussion and Lightning Talk.
Minecrafting Cities:
This workshop showed participants how to involve everyone in the discussion of urban planning, using Minecraft as an active tool in the process. Our experts Justīne Panteļējeva (urban planner and strategist) and Dagnis Samausks (urban planning engineer) showed us how to recreate real-life cities and involve us in the discussion of how our cities and shared spaces should look and work.
GenderGames:
The workshop touched upon issues of gender, identity and ethics in the gaming scene, and our two experts, Christian Mogensen, who is a specialist consultant for the Danish Center for Digital Youth Care, with responsibility for gaming, digital communities and destructive online behaviour and Andrea Brasch, who is CEO of a game company, running the Game Girl Workshops and founder of the Lyst festival, discussed gendered spaces and how to make them more welcoming to everyone.
Round Table Discussion:
The round table discussion had the subject of gaming and how games and public space interacts with each other. The discussion was between our four experts Matthew Balodi (game developer), Christian Mogensen (specialist consultant for the Danish Center for Digital Youth Care), Jānis Grunte (game developer at Brain Games) and Laura Wilson (head of Latvian Game Developer Association).
Lightning Talk:
Lightning Talk was a brief informative discussion, where participants from different fields of gaming and games shared their experience with the audience in a 10-12 min talk. Coldwild games, Trashmob, Christian Mogensen, Andrea Brasch, Brain Games and Sanra Konstante all participated in this interesting discussion.
The Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would like to thank all the experts who participated in the different events, for a successful week of discussions and workshops on important and interesting topics.
We would also like to thank all the volunteers and the participants who joined the events and workshops.
Illustration by Aigars Opincāns.
