The school: five days of intensive playing and thinking
The Larpwriter Summer School is a five-day intensive course in larp design. It was organized for the first time in 2012, and repeated in 2013, 2014 and 2015. There is also a new summer school coming up in 2016, of which you can read more.The goal of the summer school is to enable the participants to create and run their own larps. The school includes playing larps, attending lectures, participating in workshops and brainstorming ideas for possible larps. We have a special emphasis on educational larps, but our understanding of that term is very wide. We believe that the tools that create good larps can be applied broadly, and our toolbox will be useful for most kinds of larp design.
The project: building an international community
The Larpwriter Summer School is part of a broader cooperation project between the Norwegian organization Fantasiforbundet and the Belarusian organization POST. The project is aimed at creating an international community of people who use larp to explore issues relevant to them. The main activities of the project - a summer school and a follow-up seminar (the Larporatory) - are open to participants from all over the world. The project includes other activities, such as a series of larp seminars and playdays in Minsk, Belarus where the Belarusian participants of the project meet to discuss and design games.
We believe that building an open, positive and respectful community is the best way to develop the medium of larp. We have seen how quickly people understand new concepts when they are able to use them in practice in a positive environment. We especially believe that a strong community is the key to fostering a creative design process. We invite all participants to a follow-up seminar, and we encourage cooperation between participants when creating larps. The activities
The summer school and the Larporatory is organized entirely by volunteers. None of the organizers, experts or facilitators recieve money for helping organize the school.