Edu-Larp Conference in Gothenburg Tests How Role-Play Builds Democratic Capacity

The Larpocracy project — an EU-funded Horizon research initiative studying how live-action role-play develops deliberative and democratic skills — convened its first Edu-Larp Conference in Gothenburg on April 15, drawing practitioners from across Europe.

At Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg on April 15, researchers, educators, and game designers gathered for the first Edu-Larp Conference, organised by the Larpocracy project. The event brought together the consortium — Uppsala University, University of Greenwich, Tampere University, and several European game companies — with broader practitioners to share findings from the project's ongoing research.

Larpocracy (Horizon project 101177307) investigates whether LARP — live-action role-play — can serve as a meaningful space for developing deliberative and democratic skills. The core hypothesis is that embodied experience, where participants make real decisions in consequence-bearing fictional situations, produces a different kind of learning than classroom instruction or online deliberation. The Assembly, one of the project's experimental designs, places participants inside a fictional Swedish community navigating a deliberative democratic event.

The project spans education, museums, social media, and game development, looking for contexts where LARP's particular qualities — presence, consequence, empathy across difference — can be put to democratic use. Early findings suggest that participants in LARP-based deliberation show increased comfort with conflict, stronger perspective-taking, and greater willingness to revise their views.