This was a training course that I have been waiting for a long time. Escape rooms is a recent hobby of mine, it is great fun to get locked up in a “new world” for 60 minutes trying to get out solving puzzles, finding hidden items, cracking codes and working as a team. But the questions are how this can be connected with human rights and how such an entertaining concept can be transformed into something educational? These were the questions circulating in my head before arriving to Kyiv for the training course.
The training course followed a logical structure of discovering the topic of human rights, discovering the logic of escape rooms and trying to merge the two together. It was very interesting to meet people who are escape room designers, those who develop concepts, stories, scenarios and puzzles for various social quests and also escape rooms. After some visits to escape rooms, workshops by escape room designers and sessions in connection with human rights we started creating three escape rooms based on three social topics being: domestic violence, migration and life of people with disabilities.
Lots of hours of creating stories, designing puzzles going for equipment hunt in Kyiv’s shopping centers, rearranging the rooms and voila! Three thematic escape rooms were created in places that were hotel rooms before. The rooms were tested by the team and participants of the project and optimized to offer the best experience. Once the rooms were ready we held an open event where 30 young people from Kyiv came to participate in the escape rooms and test their skills.
Each group created a powerful room that immerses you into a story. A story about of an abusive husband, a story of a sexually abused mentally ill girl based on a real human right violation case and a story of a group of asylum seekers trying to continue their journey to safety. These storylines together with mind-bending puzzles and time-pressure create a strong experience for groups to understand these topics from a closer perspective, giving a chance to live through unpleasant emotions and associate oneself with characters of the stories. After finalizing each escape room young people participated in a debriefing process with the room creators unraveling hidden sense of some activities, numbers and objects.
This training course proven one more time that you need creativity, good team spirit and hard work to create something that at first sight is impossible with given resources and time. It is great to look back and understand that with 1.5 days’ work, 70 euros, 7-8 dedicated people and a hotel room you can create an educational escape room that leaves some participants with tears in their eyes, some silent and full of thoughts and some questioning the current situation worldwide.
After leaving the training course I had my answers how to connect Escape rooms with social topics, how to make them educational, I also left with inspiration to use this experience and you will see more Escape Room concepts used by our NGO’s and brought to youngsters in Estonia.
Pavel
