During the hands-on game, they will experience what it is like to make decisions in situations which are common in everyday life in an undemocratic society. Only they can decide whether to choose as their life goal either the highest achievable standard of living or an uncorrupted value system. Budapest is after Prague and Bratislava third city where FUTURAMA will be presented. From there, the FUTURAMA project will go to students in Krakow and Berlin.

First the students will watch short documentary films from the series Wonderful Years Without the Curtain in which the high school students question young Czech individuals who spent one half of their lives under Communism and the other half under democracy. The film will be followed by a discussion and the hands-on game COM-COM.

In the COM-COM game or Totalitarian Times in a Nutshell, the players will be divided into five groups - students, potential emigrants, artists, scientists and secret police agents (or their counterparts in other countries). In their new role, they will walk through seven rounds simulating situations common under totalitarian regimes, such as cooperating with the secret police, participating in organized forms of leisure, experiencing limited freedom of expression and movement,  enduring a shortage of goods or undergoing constant pressure to adapt to the value system of the official political doctrine.

“They must face consequences of their decisions that will either annoy, disappoint or surprise them. For kids, such a concern is in many cases much more valuable than history lessons at school. Even this project proved that teenagers about 15 years of age have a fragmentary and sometimes confused awareness of what was it like to live in the communist Czechoslovakia. On the other hand they show interest in this topic. If a student tells stories about his parents’ unusual experience, his audience finds out that the exploration of the recent past can be as interesting as a movie or a computer game,“ shares her own experience after FUTURAMA project execution in Prague Ms. Adéla Foldynová, author of the COM-COM game and FUTURAMA lecturer.
 
“It is surprising how different are the ideas of life in the communist Czechoslovakia between the 15 and 17-years old kids. Since the older children kept telling their parents‘ stories and apparently were previously interested in the topic of totalitarianism and socialism, kids only one or two years younger rather listened and the information were new to them. Even though the regime ended only twenty years ago, to kids this era seems like a deep past. In the beginning of the game they couldn’t imagine many things, but while playing they identified with the game and on the basis of the assigned roles they started to learn the context and consequences of their decisions. For many of them this was the very first time they could really think about that topic,“ adds Zuzana Jakalova, lecturer of the Bratislava part of the project about her experience with the FUTURAMA realization.

FUTURAMA: Reflecting on future perspectives

May and June 2010
Prague – Bratislava – Budapest – Warsaw – Berlin
May 31st - June 6th 2010

Partner school: The British International School of Budapest

The project is funded by the Community action programme „Europe for Citizens“ and is offered to schools free of charge. It was also sponsored by the Ministry of Culture Czech Republic, the CEPRO company and BeKa moving company.