MEN4DEM’s LARP tryouts, developed by @via-berlin.bsky.social, are on tour across Europe! Swipe right to see some photos from the fourth stop in Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪➡️

@via-berlin.bsky.social #LARPtryouts #masculinities #democracy

MEN4DEM's LARP tryouts, developed by @via-berlin.bsky.social berlin.bsky.social, are on tour across Europe! Swipe right to see some photos from the second stop in Athens, Greece ➡️

MEN4DEM's LARP tryouts, developed by @via-berlin.bsky.social, are on tour across Europe! Swipe right to see some photos from the first stop in Warsaw, Poland ➡️

🇳🇱 Our LARP will have its international premiere on June 1st in Poland, followed by its Dutch premiere at the @oerolterschelling.bsky.social on June 12th. From there, we will travel to the rest of Europe.

What this LARP made painfully clear is that the old version of me didn’t disappear. It’s still there. Very close. Just… right under the surface. So yeah… this character wasn’t foreign to me at all. It was familiar. Uncomfortably familiar.”

💭 A beautiful reflection from one of the players: “Playing this LARP and becoming another kind of man—another kind of person—is an ongoing process. Infinite, actually. You have to stay aware all the time.

🎲 Our new LARP What Happens When We Meet is currently being tested with expert groups across six European countries.
This time: Athens, Greece 🇬🇷
This was the second group to immerse themselves in our carefully crafted characters.

🎧🎙️Podcast Alert! Lovely to talk to @bvpaassen.bsky.social about stepping out of our comfort zone to bridge research, the arts and practice. Examples from collaborations @men4dem.bsky.social @via-berlin.bsky.social @emancipatornl.bsky.social & Push*Back*Lash @beldan.bsky.social

A promising beginning for this international trajectory.
Next up the try out in Athens 🇬🇷

The game unfolds almost organically. It is striking to see the script come to life through play. Already in this first test round we gained valuable insights and received deeply moving responses.

🎲 First try out of the LARP What happens when we meet? in Poland 🇵🇱 @tomekbesta.bsky.social @men4dem.bsky.social
A warm indoor setting with Polish delicacies and eight players fully immersed in their roles. From the very first prompts a quiet excitement emerges.

🎓 As part of the UvA practicum month, students of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences took part in a creative writing workshop with Tyler Koudijzer. Writing from imagination and lived experience, exploring neurodiversity and different ways of thinking, feeling and expressing.

Created by Eva Knibbe and Jan Hoek together with performers from Theater LeBelle, Untitled reflects on how people with intellectual disabilities are perceived and represented. The post performance discussion offered a thoughtful and critical starting point for the research month.

The month opened on Monday with a lecture by Dagmar Slagmolen and Roosmarijn van Woerden. On Tuesday, students attended the video installation and performance Untitled at @rodehoed.bsky.social in Amsterdam, marking the first shared experiential component of the practicum.

In collaboration with experts and clients of the care organisation @cordaan.bsky.social the programme combines academic teaching with artistic and experiential approaches.

🎓The UvA practicum month has begun. Two hundred students from the programme Interdisciplinary Social Sciences are engaging in a month long inquiry into neurodiversity. @uva.nl

🎓 Dagmar introduced the honours course Creating Connections through Arts-Based Research!
From Feb–May she works with international students from UvA, VU and AUC on how art can deepen research and make complex topics accessible.
Ft. creative labs, lectures and group sessions. 👩🏾‍🎨🖼
#artsbasedresearch

Such an inspiring roundtable @men4dem.bsky.social at the University of Bergamo with Cerchio degli Uomini, Bharath Ganesh, @norocel.bsky.social @lizamugge.bsky.social and an incredibly powerful performance by @via-berlin.bsky.social so many thanks

Next step: testing the characters. Are they believable, relatable, diverse enough?
We’ll find out in the coming months.

#TransformativeRolePlaying #TRP #Men4Dem #ViaBerlin #Emancipator #PlaySpace #Masculinity #Radicalisation #CoCreation

The first TRP will premiere in June 2026 in Gdańsk, Poland, followed by test sessions with our Men4Dem partners in
🇵🇱 Poland • 🇬🇷 Greece • 🇮🇹 Italy • 🇩🇪 Germany • 🇸🇪 Sweden

By stepping into another person’s shoes, participants engage in embodied reflection: a way to challenge assumptions, develop empathy, and create awareness of social dynamics.

Transformative Role Playing (TRP) is an experiential form of role play where participants don’t just act out a role - they experience change in perspective, behaviour, or awareness.

From this starting point, we began shaping the characters, their relationships, and moments of transformation. The first insights from our research project “When did you leave?” (Oerol 2025) serve as a key source of inspiration.

Our recent brainstorm, began with a simple question led by Jens from Emancipator, : what do we mean by masculinity and femininity and aren’t these, in essence, human qualities?

🇪🇺 Co-creation Transformative Role Playing – Men4Dem

Together with @emancipatornl.bsky.social and Bruno Setola, we are developing a new form of Transformative Role Playing (TRP) within the European project @men4dem.bsky.social , exploring the themes of masculinity, radicalisation, and democracy.

🇪🇺 Through @men4dem.bsky.social we explore how art, science, and society can foster visibility, empathy, and inclusion in times of polarization.

This report is valuable not only for MEN4DEM but also as inspiration for other projects and institutions working in hostile or polarized settings.

🧠 Read the full report here 👉 zenodo.org/records/1526...

While tailored to MEN4DEM, this framework offers a transferable roadmap for building collective, democratic researcher safety infrastructures across diverse contexts.

Within the European project MEN4DEM, they also developed a Researcher Safety Helpdesk - with trainings, a resource library, and peer-support sessions.