Play to connect, coexist and build ourselves in peace

Currently there is a revaluation of the ludic as an adequate pedagogical tool in formal and non-formal education, educators and educators include the game in their proposalswith different uses depending on the themes and objectives pursued.

Working on education for peace in educational spaces goes beyond content: it implies looking at, attending to, and working on group processes in a way that generates the subjective and objective conditions that build forms of bonding and coexistence within values ​​of peace. Re-create ourselves, re-create the world, hence the privileged value of the ludic.

A culture of peace only exists and is sustained by a community in which ties are the key to coexistence and the continuity of experiences and processes. We understand education for peace as a network of affective ties, where the center is in how we relate to other people and how we know the reality of which we are a part. We believe that understanding is action and only what is experienced is deeply understood.

Due to its characteristics, the game provides very powerful didactic resources to develop, from the experiential, skills and psychosocial competences such as emotional intelligence, communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, creativity and coexistence.

Playing (not in any way or at anything) we generate forms of organization and participation that ‘become a body’ and promote autonomy, solidarity, respect, empathy, listening, diversity, participation and empowerment.

The space-time of playing is a space for controlled experimentation, trial and error. It is the territory of authorized transgression: of allowing oneself to try other versions, without trial or punishment and on equal terms. This facilitates the resolution of problematic situations in original and novel ways.altering predetermined conditions, links and roles.

Playing allows us to listen, feel and understand from our integrality, since it simultaneously mobilizes all the dimensions of the human being: reason, emotion, affectivity, body and spirituality. Knowing from the body, from reason, from emotion, from the spirit: to be more, to allow oneself more.

On the other hand, the game operates on links facilitating communication processes, installing a climate of trust, respect, connection and participation that allows one to open up to the new, overcome the fear of the unknown, move in uncertainty, try different strategies and approach new knowledge, enhancing creativity and the possibilities of individuals. The game as a vehicle to make the trip, puts the focus on the encounter with ‘the others’; and it makes it easier for us to go through conflicts by listening, negotiating, creating new solutions; transcending the unique pre-established answers, looking for new ways of being, doing and being with others. Whoever plays always discovers new hidden personal skills. In addition, the game as an educational resource has the advantage that it generates pleasure, and if we enjoy what we do, we tend to want to be in that learning situation again. Playing makes it easier to overcome distances, linear, binary and dichotomous reasoning, inequalities and hierarchies. It is a vehicle to live and build a culture of peace: diverse, multiple, complex, equitable.

What is ludopedagogy?

Ludopedagogy is an intervention methodology that proposes to approach the groups proposing the game as the axis of an experience and collective experience to, from there, investigate the relationships between the game and the knowledge of reality.

It generates a device that makes it easier for people to play, in order to install that particular space/time of altered consciousness, ‘playful reality’, within which play occurs.

It is a methodology that has developed a specific didactics and pedagogy that facilitates and enhances the action of playing. A game to know, to know to transform.

It was created by the La Mancha Center of Montevideo (Uruguay) in 1989, based on the popular education of the teacher Paulo Freire, the social psychology of Pichón-Riviére, the pedagogy of Lev Vygotski and the theories of complex knowledge of Edgar Morin. In Aragón, the collaboration between the Peace Research Seminar (SEIPAZ) and the Trespiés Collective proposes ludopedagogy as a particularly valuable methodology in education for peace for socio-educational centers and spaces.

Play to connect, coexist and build ourselves in peace