The school was meant to be organized in three branches.

Every one based on a city where the partner were based, Athens, Amsterdam and the Nomadic Branch with Matera and Plovdiv, the two cities that I’ve worked with in the various project during these years.

Because of the scale of the project I was lucky to be able to involve Edgeryders as partner for the Nomadic Branch and together we developed the online platform where the project will be hosted.

We opened the call to select our Trainees and the applications were amazing.

 the Nomadic branch got application from all over the world, together with Natalia Skoczylas we created the group and the selected Trainees were stellar.

The first appointment was the International Training Week in Athens in October 2019, 5 days during which designer from all over will convene, discuss and design games together in the incredible location of Technopolis the hub from cultural events inside the old Gas industrial complex in Athens.

We hosted workshop, play tested each other games, discuss theory and shared our time. The school was ready to take off!

Everything was good and then it was March 2020 :(

The second part of the project was similar to a semester of classes, the Trainee were asked to start developing the ideas that they had in Athens and create full fleshed games. 

The Nomadic branch was organized around the online community, since our Trainees were in the US, Portugal, UK, Burkina Faso, Cyprus, Namibia, Denmark and Singapore. We organized weekly meeting and a series of webinar open to the entire community, while the advancement of the projects was shared online though post in the online platform.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit it was really hard, but at the same time we were already in the online format so the content delivery didn’t change too much, and it was comforting to meet with creative around the world and share the feelings, worries and difficulties of creating art and games in such dreadful days.

But the Trainees were able to support each other all the way, the games were play tested online and then offline, finally they were ready to be presented to the public 

After that we needed a proper party!

We decided that since the spring had been so difficult, almost like a winter, it was important to celebrate in a light way the release of the game so we organized a 10 hour party (the longest online call ever) for the day of the Solstice. We rented a virtual island, with pools, caves, nuclear plants and we enjoy our time together while playing games and presenting the projects

The trainees from other branches were also attending and it was amazing to see also their games published in the following months.

Some resources

The Trust in Play Community Platform

Trust in Play Zine (coming soon)

Nomadic Trainee’s games

Quoits by Elizabeth Hudson
Closer Ties by Bagel&Baloon
_:a meeting:_ by Thibault Shiemann
Urban Games Sampler by Ally Whitney, Jenna Yow and Lea Leroy
Time Hunter by Mark Mushiva
Tournettes by Soly
Games for Flying by Marina Kyriakou

Trust in Play Webinars

Money with Michał Grzelewski, Will Drew and Sebastian Quack (host Matteo Uguzzoni)
Festivals with Maria Saridaki, Gabi Line and Zoe Buter (host Matteo Uguzzoni)
Politics and Games with Andrea Brasch and Tassos Stevens (host Natalia Skoczylas)
Safety and Consent with Johanna Koljonen and Aron Birtalan (host Natalia Skoczylas)
How to play test with Jason Corace, Sebastian Quack and Maria Saridaki (host Matteo Uguzzoni)
Community building with Simon Johnson, Alex Levene, and Matteo Uguzzoni (host Natalia Skoczylas)