MINECRAFTING HERMOUPOLIS

Hermoupolis, a city known for its rich architectural and cultural heritage, presents a unique opportunity to influence cultural education through digital platforms. Minecraft, with its vast user base spanning a wide age range, offers an innovative medium for engaging these diverse groups of users in the gamified creation of the city of Hermoupolis within its digital environment.

The 2 year project, still running, aims to continuously involve Minecraft players, students from Syros, and online participants from across Greece and potentially around the world, in cultural learning about Ermoupoli’s heritage. We seek to foster deeper appreciation, awareness, and dissemination of the city’s cultural wealth through its architectural wonders.

Our inspiration and motivation stem from Hermoupoli’s historical significance, as well as from the growing concern over the declining engagement with and awareness of its local heritage among younger generations, as well as among the city’s visitors and residents. Traditional educational methods face challenges in capturing the interest of younger audiences at a time when technology and new media for presenting information are advancing rapidly. The project seeks to bridge an educational and technological gap by offering an engaging and interactive platform for education in architectural and cultural heritage.

The method we follow is participatory, involving the contribution and engagement of educators from Syros, as well as researchers and designers specializing in interactive applications for the presentation of culture. Minecraft’s game environment supports users’ digital participation and collaboration in jointly creating worlds, through mechanisms that can enhance multiple and diverse abilities and skills among students, as well as lifelong learners, according to contemporary studies and research applications (de Sena et al., 2021; Murphy, 2023; Thompson, 2016; Mavoa et al., 2018; Lane & Yi, 2017; Al-Washmi et al., 2014; de Andrade et al., 2020; Schrotter & Hürzeler, 2020).

MINISTRY OF CULTURE