Creative Process Stages – Creative Workshops

The game Do We Still Have Time? was created during a series of creative workshops held in 2025. Throughout the process, participants improvised, explored movement, danced, and worked with text, gradually shaping their ideas into a performative game about migration, designed to be accessible to a wide audience.

The game is rooted in performative and artistic tools and methods that support the development of empathy and a deeper understanding of other people’s experiences, decisions, and struggles. It was designed to be used in various social and cultural contexts, encouraging mutual learning through artistic forms of expression, especially within groups bringing together different generations and perspectives.

During the workshops, participants deconstructed common narratives and patterns of thinking about migration and mobility, collectively reflecting on the origins of beliefs related to nationhood, borders, and documents regulating movement. They drew both from personal experiences and from texts addressing the migration of people, animals, and plants, as well as from philosophies of movement, climate justice, and mobility studies.

By analysing the mechanics of different games, participants also explored how games influence engagement, empathy, and collective action within groups.

How do we work?

The methods we use in our workshops are participatory and democratic; the facilitators share their knowledge and propose improvisations, games, and creative tasks (movement, theater, visual arts, music, or writing). The activities are conducted in an atmosphere of mutual learning and exchange. Therefore, our program works with talents, ideas, and inspirations that emerge from the group. We focus on strengthening the skill of learning from each other as well as noticing and developing talents and interests. The workshops draw on various artistic working methods that promote social engagement and a sense of responsibility for the world we live in and for other people. The activities of the program are based on tools and methods that focus on the exchange of experience, improvisation, imagination, collaboration, and mindfulness, including people with different life stories, of different ages, and speaking various languages in joint action. They also serve as an opportunity to develop talents and skills, discovering previously unknown forms of self-expression and perspectives on the world. Important to our work is the focus on the development of imagination as a factor that can assist in daily challenges regarding important social issues of migration and climate change.

The program is implemented in collaboration with Cantieri Meticci, with the game prepared by us being available in Polish, Italian, and English.

Game presentations 

The first public presentation and playtesting session of the game took place on May 29, 2025, at the Warsaw Culture Observatory as part of the Rethink the Challenge festival, in collaboration with the theatre collective Cantieri Meticci, which specialises in creating theatrical games for broad audiences.

The second public play session was organised on June 15, 2025, at Plac Zabaw by the Vistula River in Warsaw.

The project concluded with a public presentation of the group’s work on November 30, 2025, at the new venue of Strefa WolnoSłowa at Kaliska 8/10.

Kolofon

The workshops are organised as part of the project “The Climate Crisis Is a Crisis of Imagination”, co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund – a state special-purpose fund – and the project “Crossworlds Game”, co-financed by the European Union.

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the European Union or the Foundation for the Development of the Education System. Neither the European Union nor the Foundation for the Development of the Education System can be held responsible for them.