On January 1st in 2012 Denmark took over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. However, to most Danes, the EU and the structural problems of Europe are far removed from their everyday life.
A consortium of Danish educational associations asked Workz to develop a debate concept for a series of educational events called Europe in the World. There were five regional events and a number of local debates at high schools and colleges culminating in an event at Christiansborg.
We wanted to involve the participants in the challenges that Europe is facing. If you engage people in finding solutions, they also take ownership.
So, at the events, the participants had to find answers to a series of tough challenges:
- How do we secure the competitiveness of Europe? How are we to make a living in the future?
- How do we create a green Europe that is not dependent on fossil fuel?
- What do we do when Europe "turns grey" due to large groups of the population retiring?
- How do we ensure that Europe is not overtaken in the science race?
We started out with a movie that pushes the challenges to an extreme. This was followed by a dialogue poster with four quizzes that put the topics into perspectives with questions such as "How many percent of the BNP was spent on research and education in 2008 in Denmark, Sweden, EU, USA, Japan and South Korea respectively?".
A cards-driven dialogue game then made the participants discuss and come up with solutions to the challenges.
In the end, a group of editors went through the input from the regional events and collected recommendations and tough questions. A number of politicians were then asked the questions at an event at Christiansborg.