After a long pause hosting international meetings due to the effects of the pandemic on the international youth work sector, we finally were able to hold, from the 10th to 13th of June 2021, the offline kickoff meeting of our long-term project “Breakout Box”.

Breakout Box is an international partnership between Czech Republic, Spain & Estonia that aims to explore the use of educational escape boxes in youth work and design innovative educational methods that develop competencies of young people connected to socially relevant topics.

The project will design, develop and produce escape boxes that can be played by small groups of youth as well as scaled to large classrooms.

The first block of the meeting was dedicated to updating each other on how their professional life is going and check on the current organizational capacity and after-covid coping. The session was followed by setting common values for the project and cooperation and a revision of the application, the project build up and answering any outstanding questions that partners had. The main topics discussed were: communication, reporting & monitoring of activities.

The second block of the meeting was dedicated to work on the IO2 of the project: the educational escape boxes, including possible formats and topics and the distribution among the partners:

A breakout box: an escape room inspired game played by a team of 3-5 players and can be scaled to several groups playing simultaneously. 
Time restrictions: 45 minutes (5 minute introduction, 20-25 min game, 15 min debriefing) – Set-up/reset in under 10 min;
Age of players: 14+
Game Cost: 30eur/box
We develop:

  • 8 scenarios.
  • 6 boxes + printable versions with a shopping list; each box 3 versions (en + cz/sp/ru-ee).
  • 1 reflection method.

The next block of the meeting were dedicated to brainstorming the visual identity of the project, as well as the prototyping of a common platform/website (playversity.co). After individual work and result presentation, administrative and financial matters were revised and the meeting was closed with a concrete action plan.

Let’s start the work!

#StayShokkin