Innovative formats: Communicating Europe

We produced a humorous short film (English subtitles via settings) for the 2019 European Elections, which, with exaggeration and action, shows the added value of Europe for people's everyday lives and thus draws attention to the importance of the elections. Within only 12 days before the elections, under the hashtag #ZurückZuEuropa, the film and teaser then had over half a million viewers on various social media channels and were "shared" over 2000 times. Since then, over 10,000 views have been added again - to approximately 700,000 views. Meanwhile, the film has been nominated for several media awards.

In the interactive online game "Unionslabor", jointly developed with the Heinz Nixdorf Stiftung and the Berlin-based company planpolitik, young people from the age of 14 build their "own" union together. In the role of a European head of state, they weigh up national and common European interests, negotiate political measures and try to reach agreement. They have five rounds of the game to do so, in the game this means the five decades up to 2030. Since its launch in November 2018, the free offer has been very well received by the young target group as well as by school and extracurricular actors in European education and is being used actively.

Both the film and the game are great tools to enhance school lessons about Europe. Teacher handouts for in-depth use in the classroom supplement the offer.

As pilot projects, film and game provide new impulses for the question of the functioning and added value of Europe - an approach that we would like to continue with the further development and exploration of this and similar formats.