From epic fail to great success and the Europe 25 chapter

Looking back into 2024, the back then January has been almost prophetic. „Wasteland – beginning at the end“ is the title of my January 11th 2024 post.

Before I simplified the complexity of food systems down to 4 quadrants. The last quadrant being the one, where all the waste of our food systems goes. In an ideal world this „waste quadrant“ at the end is naturally the beginning of the first quadrant of food systems: Where our food grows. It’s a perfect „Circular“ when the waste of food  becomes the base for new food.

But in our current world, the waste quadrant is the one, where the Circular usually ends and creates a big mass with a destructive impact on our life systems.

In 2025 – a whole year later – I am still „Beginning at the end“ and found my calling in the „Wastelands“ – although not the most pretty one in food systems and I am looking forward to dedicate my passion to the other quadrants, once my work in the Wastelands is being done.

In my last English post here from May 1st 2024 I reported our German Smart City Kassel Youth Participation project getting ready to launch in it’s first iteration – and then stopped posting here because all my time has been focused on our German Projekt and local work in the documenta City Kassel documented here.

We had an epic fail on May 29th in our first field test, celebrated the valuable insights, modified our approach, re-launched our Smart Waste Agency Game Project during the summer holidays, now witnessed super positive resonance among the young participants and finally released a first printed Alpha version of the Tabletop- and card game in December – for the exploration of the Wastelands, Recycling and the Circular.

It’s not just about, what we produced but how we produced it. In a cooperative of 3 city administration departments, 3 non-profits and 63 young people, age 7-15 and with an Open-Source approach and agile sprints.

2025 „Out of town into EUrope“

In 2025, I want to take our game out of town and into the European Union. We plan to connect young people from diverse EU countries and cities on our gamified social network, teach the design of waste monster cards, smart waste multi-tools, and tabletop wastelands via local youth organizations, localize the game into different languages and country contexts, and start the exchange about smart waste, zero waste, and recycling in our cities.

• Develop and launch the SWA gamified open-source collaboration social network.
• Find local partners from each of 5 cities in 5 diverse EU countries.
• Host a SWAG game design event in each of the 5 cities and connect its young participants via the collaboration network. Begin the exchange about smarter waste, our region-specific recycling, and the possibility space of an EU circular economy.
• Bring all participants together in a simultaneously live event stream from all 5 EU cities.
• Visit each other during summer holidays.

Connected by our own gamified open-source collaboration network, we could tackle our „waste monsters“ together, exchange smart ideas about ways to do so and continue to develop THE SWAG. On our path we will connect with agents and young „game designer“ in other countries with the same challenge and learn about our regional specifics.

The fresh EU expansion Page launched here:
https://www.the-swag.eu/

Branching from the German site here:
https://swa.futurespace.org/

and being financed with radical Transparency here:
https://opencollective.com/the-swag