Generation Earth

Author:	Public Play Spaces
PPS, EU, 2021
https://www.publicplayspace.eu/

Generation Earth, the first PPS Open Game Event, was carried out by CLAC in Palermo on the 26th of October 2020.  Generation Earth was conceived as a game experience about the very first phase of a placemaking action. In this phase, the objective was to recognize and get familiar with a specific place and environment in order to start the process of taking care of it.

The game was based on the New Anthropocene framework and it considers garbage and litter as traces of an investigation. As traces of our era. A leaf, a cigarette butt, a flyer, a can… These are waste that we usually find on the streets; but if we change our lenses, these objects can become precious clues, ready to tell us a story.

The game was played by a group of more than 35 teenagers and volunteers, and was carried out in three phases.

The first one, was a search. In this phase, players had to select, on a predefined trip, between 4 and 8 elements of garbage.

During the second phase, a group of experts explained to participants the materials they selected.

In the third phase, players had to invent a small story about the things they collected.

The Generation Earth game was able to identify the state of a place while highlighting that the things people found out there had a backstory to tell. Before, one could have considered them as just useless refuse, but now players were able to identify their previous function and the service they provided.

The location chosen for the game was the “Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa” and its neighborhood, the same one where the Creative and Capacity Building Workshop of CLAC was held.

The game started from the garden of the Zisa Castle, in front of the association “La Casa di tutte le Genti”. Participants were divided into small groups of 4 or 5 and started their trip guided by a volunteer with the objective of collecting 6 traces or elements from the ground. The volunteers were former participants from the CLAC Creative and Capacity Building Workshop celebrated last July! (together with people from the different organizations involved).

Arriving at the Legambiente site, each group presented the objects they found and experts described the characteristics of the materials.

During the game, 5 stories were developed on approximately 36 objects found during the tour. Objects like bottles, cans, corks, plastic snakes, or medicine blisters, became part of different tales and each one of the stories talked about the place and the uses of such objects within that spot.

The game ended up with a brief presentation by each of the 5 groups.

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STORY 1: A piece of paper, a wood-stick, a cork, and a candy card

Once upon a time there was a young boy.

The boy lived on a branch of a tree and one morning he was eating a golden candy, when suddenly the branch broke. The boy fell to the ground, hit his head and no longer remembered what he was doing but found a branch of the tree and the candy paper.

At one point he saw a cork moving and began to follow it. Looking closer he realized that the cap was tied to a plastic thread and was pulled by a beautiful girl. Then he remembered everything, he was on the branch of a tree because of a spell that was broken by the intervention of a girl who gave him a golden candy. Now all that remained was to pick up all the pieces of the story from the ground and tell another.

STORY 2: A ticket for the Zisa castle, a hair pin and a used coffee cap

Once upon a time there was a young lady. Her name was Vanessa.

A sunny sunday Vanessa took a walk with her dad to Zisa’s garden.

They went to buy tickets to enter the Castle, which was still closed because it was too early.

While they waited, they entered a bar to have breakfast. His dad liked the coffee very much and asked for a sample so he could buy it back.Once back at the castle, Vanessa tied her hair from being too hot. Before going home he started playing with the dogs he was in the park. While they were playing, both the coffee bag and the castle ticket fell out of their father’s pockets. After a few steps Vanessa untied her hair and she too fell the hairpin she had used to tie it.

STORY 3: A pack of cigarettes, a plastic cup, a dry leaf, a pack of chewing gum, a package of a medicine for stomach, USB adaptor, a flower, the paper of a candy

The title was the drunkard… then Healed.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Federico who drank and smoked. One day he accidentally ate a leaf. Waking up the next day he found that his breath stank. So he decided to go and buy some chewing gum. While on the road he remembered that he had dropped some wine on the USB power adapter before falling asleep. He got a lot of pain because of his bad habits and so he took medicine for the pain. Along the way he met a beautiful girl and gave him a flower and together they ate candy.

STORY 4: A bottle of medicine, Cigarette paper, Wine carton, a mysterious metal tool, a plastic piece of a toyO

ne afternoon, we were together and we decided to collect some objects, as evidence of what was on the ground. We found 5 objects.

Among these the most incredible was a metal object, made up of many plates. It was so tiring that even Google couldn’t tell us what it was.

STORY 5: A rubber snake, a clothespin, a bottle cap, a paper handkerchief, a piece of wood, a flower, a pine cone, a stone

Once upon a time there was a girl who was under a tree. A flower fell on his head, but alas also a pine cone. Looking around he saw a boy drinking from a can. Fortunately, the boy had a plastic cup with him and offered the girl a drink. After drinking, the girl walked home and tripped over a stone, peeling her knee. Then he dried himself with a handkerchief. Once back home, she washed the dirty clothes and hung them with a clothespin. Meanwhile, the brother was playing with a plastic snake and a metal cap. Fortunately, the knee healed soon and the girl was able to go out with the mysterious boy who had offered her a drink.

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