Protect Yourself : C1 in Elche, “A game to discover bioclimatic housing”

Second part of the French contribution, how the eco conception of houses can contribute a lot to fight climate change

Introducing the speaker

Part 1 : previous experiences about environmental education, in 2012

I am Yves Lévêque, graphic designer, Erasmus+ project manager and President of the ngo Graphistes de l’Ombre

In 2010, our organisation, made up of graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, videographers and developers, most of whom have a complementary educational activity, asked itself about the desirable evolution of its missions.

Everything about the environment was quite new to us, and I was full of questions and eager to learn.

We had the opportunity to be financed by the European Social Fund and our region PACA to carry out a study on the evolution of green jobs in our sector of activity.

This gave rise to the COOPCOM (COOPerative COMmunication) training programme, and to the first educational EURO ACTORS FOR ENVIRONMENT training course, in which we felt like at first to explore the housing aspect of environmental issues, as it appears that it was a very concrete starting point.

In partnership with the eco-gite Le Loubatas, we designed a “Le Loubatas : Discovering a bio-climatic house”, an educational game which allowed to become familiar with the different elements of an environmentally friendly habitat.

The game was handed over to the eco-lodge at the end of our training, which used it briefly with school groups before losing it during team and management changes.

Ten years after, we are happy to have had the opportunity through the Protect Yourself project to revive it and, based on our experiences, to improve it… this re-use of a tool is also a way for us to practice our profession of education in an ecological way.

The game elements are available for download below. We invite you to use them, to share the new question cards you create and to be freely inspired by it to propose similar educational games tracing other sites of interest. And of course, Le Loubatas will welcome you with open arms if you go to visit it!

Part 2 : workshop about the game

During the short workshop we conducted in Elche, we quickly went through the different stages of the game :

  • presentation of the elements (board, pieces, magic dice, question cards) and of the rules (interesting point, we imagined two of them, one competitive and one collaborative)
  • presentation of the Loubatas eco-lodge through a photo language exercise (recognition and attempt by the group to locate the components of the place on the boardgame)
  • Demonstration of how the game works, based on a few questions
  • Documentation and creation of new question sheets in small groups

Part 3 : Elements