Registration is now closed.
The project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement N°101095058
Associate Professor
Mail: rtoft@edu.au.dk
Phone: +4520466756
Website: www.epic-we.eu
We are thrilled to invite you to EPIC-WE Legacies, a landmark event celebrating the achievements, results, innovations, impact, recommendations, and future potentials of the EPIC-WE Europe Horizon project (2023-2026).
This is your chance to gather with fellow partners and participants from the cultural sector, creative industries, higher education institutions, and with youth actors to experience, play with, activate, and expand the legacy of EPIC-WE’s accomplishments.
Join us at EPIC-WE Legacies Event to:
Over the last.3 years, EPIC-WE has delivered a validated, transferable models, frameworks, and formats for cross-sector collaboration between youth (15-25 years), cultural heritage institutions, creative industries, and higher education institutions in 3 European Cultural Hubs resulting in 12 Cultural Game Jams with more than 400 youth creating more than 100 Games through/for Culture.
By attending EPIC-WE Legacies, you will leave not just inspired, but equipped – with open-access toolkits, methods, cross-sector insight, and the energy to seed cultural ecosystems, hubs, game jams and game-making in culture, industry, and education. Let’s carry forward the “epic we” together: strengthening youth as game-makers and culture-makers, reinforcing participatory cross-sector co-creation, and embedding value-driven heritage-empowered games in Europe’s cultural future. We look forward to welcoming you in Aarhus and as part of an epic we.
ARoS Art Museum
Experience the art and collections that young people have engaged to create Games through Culture. Get introduced to and try the games.
Join us for the EPIC-WE Artwalk at ARoS Art Museum. Here you will get to experience some of the artworks that has been used as game-making material in young people’s creation of more than 100 ‘Games through Culture’ during 12 Cultural Game Jams - You will also get the chance to experience some of the young people’s ‘Games through Culture’ which will be showcased at the EPIC-WE Games through Culture Expo at ARoS during the day. Get insight into and try the games to experience how cultural heritage can engage and empower youth and give voice to new youth perspectives and cultural heritage experiences.
With EPIC-WE Project Lead at ARoS Kasper Marius Nørmark
AIAS, Aarhus University
Catch your lunch while walking the EPIC-WE Wall of Legacies and sharing your perspectives in the EPIC-WE Policy Corner.
11:30-12:45: EPIC-WE Wall of Legacies
Walk the timeline of the EPIC-WE and experience the project in pictures, stories, activities, deliverables, milestones, and key events.
With EPIC-WE Communication & Dissemination Officer, Rhian O'Sullivan, KEA European Affairs (Belgium)
Get involved and share your perspective at the EPIC-WE Policy Corner. Discuss with us and help to prioritise what us important for youth, education, creative industries, and cultural institutions when it comes to valuable policy futures and games & culture.
With EPIC-WE Policy Officers Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning and Sofia Laranjeiro, Creative Business Network (Denmark)
AIAS, Aarhus University
Get state-of-the-art, key research results, and core innovations of the EPIC-WE project: QH Cultural Hubs, Cultural Game Jams, Games through/for Culture, and youths empowered participation through game-making as culture-making.
12:45-13:00: Welcoming Remarks & Formal Opening
Welcoming remarks and opening of the EPIC-WE Legacies Event at Aarhus University.
Welcoming remarks by Jeppe Dørup Olesen, Chief Innovation Officer at KITCHEN, Aarhus University
13:00-13:30: EPIC-WE in Brief: The project and its legacies
Sharing the overarching results, innovation outcomes, and its core models, kits, and concepts with the participants. Where did we start, what did we do, what came out of the project, what do we know, and what might it all mean?
With EPIC-WE Project Lead Rikke Toft Nørgård, Aarhus University
Discover the EPIC-WE Quadruple Helix Ecosystem and Cultural Hub model for empowered cross-sector futures. We unpack the developed and tested ecosystem and model that brings together cultural institutions, creative industries, education, and civic stakeholders to collaborate and co-design innovations together ‘in the middle’. Participants will gain insight into the principles and recommendations underpinning the QH Cultural Hub model developed and tested through the project. Get inspiration for ‘meeting in the middle,’ cross-sector pathways for empowered participation in games and culture, and concrete steps to start or strengthen cross-sector collaboration and innovation.
With Rikke Toft Nørgård (Designing the QH Cultural Hubs), Aarhus University, Susannah Montgomery & Maaike Jansen (QH Cultural Hubs in Practice), Sound & Vision (Netherlands), Rachel Somers Miles, Hilversum Cultural Hub Lead
Discussant: Micaela Fonseca, Óbidos Cultural Hub, Lusófona University (Portugal)
14:00-14:30: EPIC-WE Innovations: Cultural Game Jams & Game-making as Culture-making
Gain insight into the design, potentials, and value of the Cultural Game Jam format that invite youth to engage game-making as culture-making and create games through and for culture. Cultural Game Jams transforms audiences into participants that actively engage and transform cultural heritage, values, and stories into playable cultural game prototypes. The result: the Cultural Game Jam model and kit developed over 3 years for youth agency and empowered participation in culture through game-making.
With Rikke Toft Nørgård (Designing the Cultural Game Jam model & kit), Aarhus University and Sabine Niederer, (Cultural Game Jams in research and practice), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands)
14:30-14:45: Short Coffee Break
14:45-15:15: EPIC-WE Research: State-of-the-art & Key Research Results
Receive the research results from the EPIC-WE project, answering its research questions through its State-of-the-art reports and Design-Based Research interventions: 1) How can games be understood as significant culture and cultural worlds in their own right while also shaping identities, society and our cultural world in beneficial ways? 2) How can cultural heritage institutions together with creative industries facilitate cultural game jams to enable youth's widened and empowered participation in culture and cultural heritage through culture- and value-sensitive game-making? 3) How might young people come to see themselves as cultural game-makers and value-creators through game jamming with European cultures and values? What is the potential value of cultural game jams and helix systems for culture, creative industries, youth, and European society?
With EPIC-WE Lead on State-of-the-art Conceicao Costa, Lusófona University (Portugal) & Lead on Cross-Hub Research Analysis Kim Holflod, Aarhus University
Discussant: Expert in Culture- & Value-sensitive Game Design & Games Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth College (USA)
15:15-16:00: EPIC-WE Partner Panel: Three Cultural Hubs & Twelve Cultural Game Jams – Experiences and Insights from Cross-sector Practices
The EPIC-WE Partner Panel gives lived insights from three Cultural Hubs and twelve Cultural Game Jams, sharing sector insights, reflecting on potential futures and gives voice to the cross-sector partnership models and events.
Panel Participants: Rachel Somers Miles, Hilversum Hub Lead & Cultural Heritage Partner (Netherlands), Kim Holflod, Aarhus Hub Lead & Youth Partner (Denmark), Conceicao Costa, Óbidos Hub Lead & Higher Education Partner (Portugal), René van Engelen, Game Studio Partner (Netherlands), Carlos Coutinho, Cultural Heritage Partner (Portugal)
Panel Moderator: Sabine Niederer, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands)
ARoS Art Museum
Experience first-hand what games based on cultural heritage look like. Meet some of the young cultural game jam teams behind the EPIC-WE Games through Culture and try their games yourself.
What do games based on cultural heritage look like? Meet some of the young cultural game jam teams behind the EPIC-WE Games through Culture and get a chance to play them yourself. Here you get to see what cultural-creative solutions young people from Portugal, The Netherlands and Denmark came up with when using cultural heritage as game-making material. Let’s celebrate the legacy of EPIC-WE together with games, art, and a glass of bubbles at ARoS!
The EPIC-WE Games through Culture Expo will be opened with short introductions from the EPIC-WE Partner Leads in Cultural Heritage: Kasper M. Nørmark, EPIC-WE Project Lead for ARoS (Denmark), Rachel Somers Miles, EPIC-WE Project Coordinator for Sound & Vision (Netherlands), and Carlos Coutinho, Head of the Culture Subdivision of the Municipality of Óbidos (Portugal).
AIAS, Aarhus University
Learn about key recommendations for future practices, discover the project’s impact and policies, and engage with partners in research, cultural heritage, game industries, education, and youth that share and reflect on youth empowerment, key insights, potentials, and take-aways.
9:00-9:30: EPIC-WE Impact: Measuring What Matters - Mapping the Impact across the EPIC-WE Quadruple Helix Cultural Innovation Ecosystem
EPIC-WE Impact presents the project's comprehensive impact assessment, answering EPIC-WE’s impact questions with evidence from twelve Cultural Game Jams and three Cultural Hubs. The presentation shares measured outcomes alongside validated toolkits and governance templates for replication. Cross-hub analysis reveals the effect of scalable Quadruple-Helix partnership on cultural institutions, the games industry, and civic participation. It delivers answers to EPIC-WE’s impact questions, showcases specific outcomes - such as youth engagement metrics, co-creation capacities, and innovation in cultural heritage and game-making - and highlights the broader societal contributions of games, culture, and youth agency and empowerment. In conclusion, the presentation outlines how these impact findings translate into future practices and actionable recommendations for cultural institutions, creative industries, educators and policymakers.
With EPIC-WE Lead on Impact, Rebecca Hasselhoff, Sound & Vision (Netherlands)
Discussant: EPIC-WE Advisory Board Member Professor Stig Børsen Hansen, Southern University Denmark and EPIC-WE Advisory Board Member Director Chris Solarski, Solarski Studio (Switzerland).
9:30-10:00: EPIC-WE Policy Roundtables & Briefs: Policy Pathways for Heritage-Games Cultural Partnerships and Youth Empowerment
This talk on EPIC‑WE Policy presents the project’s policy recommendations derived from its policy brief series and policy roundtables, offering actionable guidance for cultural institutions, creative industries, higher-education, and policymakers. It links empirical findings to the project’s published policy briefs and project deliverables. It shares with attendees how these policies translate EPIC-WE’s research and interventions into actionable policy outcomes and pathways to embed cultural innovation and youth agency into institutional and policy ecosystems.
With EPIC-WE Lead on Policy, Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning and Sofia Laranjeiro, Creative Business Network (Denmark)
10:00-10:30: Sharing the EPIC Innovations: Games through Culture, Games for Culture, Games with Culture
This presentation introduces the core innovation from the EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jams: Games through Culture, Games for Culture, and Games with Culture. It gives insight into the potential for games and culture when youth work creatively with EU values and heritage – and shares the resource of 100+ games through/for culture created by more than 400 youth in the EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jams and the 8 games with culture further developed in collaboration between youth and professional game studios. These games showcase the result of adopting youth-empowered co-creation with values and heritage. As a result of the EPIC-WE’s tested and research-validated Cultural Game Jam model & kit, the Games through/for/with Culture highlight future practices in games and culture where youth act as empowered co-creators of these futures, cultures, and games.
Introduction to games through/for culture by EPIC-WE Project Lead Rikke Toft Nørgård, Aarhus University. Presentations on cultural game prototypes by Carlo de Gaetano, Visual Methodologies Collective, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), Wilson Almeida, HEI-Lab Digital Human-environment Interaction Lab, Lusófona University (Portugal). Presentation on games with culture, Founder of Mothworks, Amalie Kae (Denmark).
Discussant: Expert in Culture- and Value-sensitive Game Design & Games Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth College (USA)
10:30-10:45: Short Coffee Break
10:45-11:30: EPIC-WE Panel on Empowerment: Youth as Partner & Empowered Participation with Games and Culture – Experiences and Insights from Cross-sector Partnerships
The EPIC-WE Empowerment Panel shares the experiences from the heart of the project – the young people themselves – along with reflections and key insights from EPIC-WE sector partners that has engaged and collaborated with youth as partner in games, culture, and research. The panel focuses on the potentials, possibilities, and limitations of youth’s empowered participation with games and culture while reflecting on potential futures, recommendations, and legacies.
Panel Participants: Maria Costa, Óbidos Youth Advisory Board, Elena Cheldaeva, Hilversum Youth Advisory Board, and Lea Bourgeat, Aarhus Youth Board with Kim Holflod, Aarhus University (Denmark), Maarten Groen, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), Nélio Codices, Battlesheep (Portugal)
Panel Moderator: Sabine Niederer, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands)
11:30-12:00: EPIC-WE in Conclusion: The project recommendations and futures
Sharing the overarching conclusions and recommendations on the macro, meso, and micro level of the project with the participants. Where did we begin, where did it all take us, and where should we go from here? The presentation includes opportunities for participants to share their reflections on the recommendations and opportunities for epic futures.
With EPIC-WE Project Lead Rikke Toft Nørgård, Aarhus University
AIAS, Aarhus University
Catch your lunch while walking the EPIC-WE Wall of Legacies and sharing your perspectives in the EPIC-WE Policy Corner
EPIC-WE Wall of Legacies
Walk the timeline of the EPIC-WE and experience the project in pictures, stories, activities, deliverables, milestones, and key events.
With EPIC-WE Communication & Dissemination Officer, Rhian O'Sullivan, KEA European Affairs (Belgium)
EPIC-WE Policy Corner
Get involved and share your perspective at the EPIC-WE Policy Corner. Discuss with us and help to prioritize what us important for youth, education, creative industries, and cultural institutions when it comes to valuable policy futures and games & culture
With EPIC-WE Policy Officers Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning and Sofia Laranjeiro, Creative Business Network (Denmark)
Filmby Aarhus
Join the workshop to learn from the experts and hear the stories from EPIC-WE youth as co-creators of European Culture. Get your hands on the toolkits and models and discuss cross-sector collaboration in culture, games, and education.
The workshop invites partners in creative industries, games, cultural heritage, education and youth organisations to practical, hands-on learning with EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jam kits and methods through cross-sector collaboration. The workshop centres on youth voices and industry partnerships, cross-sector collaboration in Cultural Hubs, and the potentials and possibilities in positioning game-making as a valuable form of culture-making. Participants will get hands-on insight into the Cultural Game Jam Kit, engage in sector and cross-sector discussions, and explore the QH Cultural Hub model to build powerful co-creation pathways for future practices.
• Understand the EPIC-WE approach to empowering youth as co-creators of European culture through Cultural Game Jams and value-sensitive game design.
• Learn directly from youth participants about their experiences, motivations, and creative-cultural contributions.
• Explore best practices from creative industry partners and discover how game companies, cultural heritage institutions, and education partners can collaborate in games and culture.
• Explore and discuss ways to adopt and adapt EPIC-WE models, methods, and tools within your own organisation or community.
The Capacity Building Workshop is led by Filmby Aarhus, with presentations from Game Partners: Battlesheep (Portugal), Dropstuff Media (Netherlands), and Mothworks (Denmark), Advisory Board Member Chris Solarski, youth from the Cultural Game Jams and EPIC-WE Youth Board Members.
Filmby Aarhus
Join or continue the discussion, network with epic people & try the games for culture created by youth in Denmark, Netherlands, and Portugal
Can games be the voice of youth, and express their engagements, perspectives, and identities in relation to cultural themes and societal issues? Join us for the celebration of youths cultural-creative game-making and meet some of the game-makers themselves. Experience showcased prototype games for culture and with values from the Cultural Game Jams created by youth in Denmark, Netherlands, and Portugal – as well as the 8 featured games selected from these prototypes and developed in partnership between youth and game companies. Explore with us youth cultural-societal engagement an empowerment in the form of game-making. The EPIC-WE Games for Culture EXPO will be opened with short introductions from the game studios that have produced the EPIC-WE Featured Games: Founder of Mothworks, Amalie Kae (Denmark), Artistic and General Director René van Engelenburg, Dropstuff Media (Netherlands), and Director of Battlesheep, Nélio Codices, (Portugal)
