Moving to a new city is rarely easy – I did it a couple of times in my life already. For the last couple of months, I was really looking forward to moving to Tallinn. Mainly because of the people I would be working with, as well as for the cosiness of the city, as Tallinn isn’t one of the largest capitals in the world. And I was also looking forward to the crises and challenges and to dealing with them.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Filip. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Slovakia. When I finished high school, I move to the Czech Republic to pursue a degree in European politics. And after I graduated, the best idea was to do an EVS in Tallinn, as I didn’t want to search for a career strictly connected to my field of studies. For the last 3 years, I have been a youth worker, project coordinator and trainer in a youth organization Be International in Brno, Czech Republic. During those years, education and youth work became something I value a lot. Innovations is something I value a lot, but approach with care. And there is this little nerd living inside me, trying to get out and take hold of me. Therefore, games are something I also value a lot.
Put all those ingredients in a pot, add a little bit of whatever makes sense with those flavours and there you have it – my EVS. Based around use of games in education and development of new teaching methods. Alright, but what does that mean in real life?
I will be working on several projects here. The first I want to tell you about is a city game. Have you ever been to an escape room? If yes, good. If not, get out and do one as soon as possible. It’s addictive. So, imagine you are visiting a new city with your friends and you want to explore it in a not-so-traditional way. You meet a couple of secret agents in a hidden location. They equip you with all the high-tech gadgets from the 1980s, give you basic instructions and send you into the city to uncover a Cold War conspiracy and save the world from atomic conflict. Apart of that, you might be able to learn a bit about the history of the city during Soviet occupation. Yeah, so that’s one of the things we have been working on for last couple of weeks with an incredible team of people. Hopefully, we will finish by December so you can play too in case you happen to be around.
The second thing I am kickstarting here is a game club in Kesklinna Noortekeskus, a youth centre where we have our office. The basic idea is to run a club for the local kids once a week. Not only to play board or any other games, but also to experiment and create something new. It’s definitely just about playing. It’s about the challenge, team work and creative problem solving. It’s about learning, but in a way when you really don’t know you are learning during the process, just to realize couple of hours, days or months later. That’s what I consider beautiful about games.
In the beginning I talked about the crises and challenges and as they say, you don’t really learn if you don’t get to face those. Up until recently I had been facing a really big one – semi-homelessness, as I call it. As Tallinn has been experiencing a bubble in the housing market recently, it was almost impossible to find a place to live within my EVS budget. Thanks to support of Shokkin and people around, I always had a roof over my head and I finally managed to move into a shared flat few days ago. Yay! Give me a new challenge, world!