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Minecrafting for Resilience – A Different Perspective

Youth involvement in city planning is no longer a distant ideal—it’s happening now in creative and unprecedented ways. More than just residents, young people are increasingly viewed as key players in shaping the future of their cities. The European Youth Goals highlight the importance of empowering young people to actively participate in decision-making processes, particularly in designing youth-friendly urban spaces.

But how do we engage youth in ways that resonate with them? Enter Minecraft—a digital tool that has become more than just a game. With its versatile design environment, Minecraft is being used by cities to foster youth participation in urban planning. Through this platform, young people can envision and build public spaces that reflect their own ideas and aspirations for the future.

The idea behind Minecraft for Resilience is simple yet transformative: by giving young people a virtual platform to express their ideas, cities are offering them a tangible way to influence real-world change. The MC-YOU Project taps into this concept, allowing young people to step into the role of “MCs”—the emcees of their communities—giving them a voice in urban development processes.

Scientific studies on gamification and policy engagement show that interactive platforms like Minecraft foster meaningful participation. The immersive and creative nature of the game enables young people to better understand the complexities of urban planning, while also equipping them with the tools to propose sustainable solutions. In this way, youth are not merely participating—they are leading.

The MC-YOU Project seeks to capitalize on the popularity of Minecraft, which boasts around 170 million monthly users, to engage young people in shaping their cities. Through structured workshops, interactive sessions, and peer exchanges, the project brings together young citizens, urban planners, and policymakers to collaboratively design resilient urban spaces.

The process is grounded in five key phases:

Analyse & Commit: Participants explore how Minecraft has been successfully used in youth engagement across several case studies. The engagement activities gather practitioners, policymakers, and young people to learn, exchange and brainstorm on ways to strengthen youth participation in resilient city planning.

Educate & Empower: Young people are trained as MC Multipliers, gaining the skills to further engage their peers and local communities. By the end of this phase, the project will have trained multiple young people who will then form Minecraft teams across piloting cities.

Consult & Develop: Using the Agora Methodology, the project creates spaces for public consultations, where youth present their ideas and receive feedback. They then refine their proposals through Minecraft workshops, repurposing urban spaces dedicated by the municipalities based on the results gathered from the consultation process with the citizens.

Advocate & Sustain: Advocacy efforts involve holding public hearings where youth present their final urban projects, developed through Minecraft, to city policymakers. The project will produce policy recommendations to ensure that these youth-driven initiatives become part of long-term urban planning strategies.

Celebrate & Multiply: The final phase includes awards ceremonies and sustainability conferences to promote the ongoing success of the MC-YOU model across other cities and regions.

With the first cities of Riga, Faro and Sandanski joining to pilot the MC-YOU model, the results are beginning to speak for themselves. By blending traditional policymaking with innovative, youth-driven approaches like Minecraft, cities will be able to foster resilience and sustainability while building trust between generations. The model offers new perspectives on how young people can be active participants in shaping policy, instead of remaining as passive beneficiaries.

Initial results from the MC-YOU Project are promising. The collaborative design process between youth, educators, and city officials is leading to more vibrant, inclusive, and resilient urban spaces. The next phase of the project aims to gather comprehensive data on the long-term impacts of these youth-driven initiatives, which will be shared in upcoming publications.

„A scuola con Minecraft” –  Efforts toward a gamified education in Italian schools

Minecraft has become the best selling videogame of all time. But how? Minecraft is called a „Sandbox game”, meaning that it has no set goal: the ultimate goal of the video game is to enhance creativity. The innovative dynamic of the application is what makes it unique and revolutionary, allowing such deep layers of complexity to the game.

That’s the reason that brought Italian schools to embrace the gamified approach, via Minecraft Education, within their educational programme, almost a decade ago. The most relevant progress in this direction is fairly recent. Didacta (the Italian fair dedicated to schooling) represented a huge turning point because Indire – National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research – and Giunti Scuola, in collaboration with Microsoft Italy have presented the book “A scuola con Minecraft. Designing a world in cubes”, on the 19th March 2021, written by Andrea Benassi. The author gives the best reason of why Minecraft represented a huge shift from traditional learning: „Using Minecraft, students didn’t answer questions as they used to do during an examination, but rather explaining problems and proposing solutions.”

The production of this book was crucial to share Mineclass, an experiment conceived in 2018 by Indire together with Microsoft Italy to launch a training program for teachers so they could integrate the use of Minecraft into traditional educational programs. Therefore, it is imporant to notice that the demand for digital training for teachers started with students.

But the digital divide that separates Italy from other European countries cannot be ignored. Francesco Del Sole, Director of Education at Microsoft Italy , told Tecnica della Scuola that: “New technological trends such as Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and the Cloud open up infinite opportunities in all sectors of the market and in our everyday lives, but to truly reap the benefits, having the right skills becomes crucial. Unfortunately, Italy is one of the countries with the strongest skills mismatch, or the gap between the skills required by the job market and those actually available. It is our will to proceed alongside the MIUR to contribute in a concrete way to a School that allows the development of new learning methods, broadening horizons and offering students the opportunity to acquire those skills that make them competitive professionals in the global market and able to help our country grow”.

Heritage Education Meets Digital Innovation: The MI.MOMO Project in Faro

Between 2021 and 2023, the Municipality of Faro in Portugal implemented the MI.MOMO project – Minecraft and Modernist Architecture in Faro. The project used Minecraft as the central tool to engage young people with the city’s rich modernist architecture.

More Than Just a Game: Minecraft as an Educational Tool

At the center of MI.MOMO is Microsoft’s Minecraft Education, the specialized version of the popular game designed to serve as a dynamic learning platform. Launched in 2016, Minecraft Education has been used in classrooms around the world, promoting creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving within a digital environment.

Faro’s Modernist Legacy

Starting in the mid-20th century, Faro became known for its distinct modernist architecture, designed by architects like Manuel Gomes da Costa and others. Today, the city features around 500 modernist buildings, each with unique adaptations to the local climate, such as flat roofs, cement grids for filtering the strong sunlight, and more. The number and features of these buildings contribute to Faro’s unique status as a modernist city in Southern Europe.

The MI.MOMO Project: Minecraft and Modernist Architecture

The MI.MOMO project was created as part of Faro’s candidacy for the European Capital of Culture 2027, highlighting the city’s strong connection to modernist architecture. The project has run two editions, each focusing on the digital replication of various modernist buildings in Faro. In the first edition, students from schools in Faro participated, while the second edition expanded to include schools in the Loulé municipality and a school in Maputo, Mozambique. Across both editions, approximately 600 students were involved in the project. The project integrated various disciplines and included thematic lessons, guided tours, and presentations of the Minecraft models developed by the students.

A Commitment to Cultural Heritage for People

MI.MOMO aligns with the principles of the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society of the Council of Europe, signed in Faro in 2005. This convention emphasizes the importance of cultural heritage as a foundation for human rights and democracy.

MI.MOMO and MC-YOU

The MI.MOMO project reveals how digital tools like Minecraft can promote a deeper understanding of cultural heritage among young people.The MC-YOU project will now test Minecraft as a tool for participation in the city by inviting young people to reimagine public spaces to make them more sustainable and resilient.

MEETING IN FARO

MC-YOU project members held its first onsite work meeting in Faro, Portugal, on the 21st and 22nd of March. 

MC-YOU project aims to empower young people to take a proactive role in creating resilient cities. With this end in view the youngsters are supposed to develop and test a new youth-led policy model that includes leveraging creative and educational potential of Minecraft. The project also offers a sustainable solution to policy makers to engage youth in political processes on the local level by endowing them with a sense of agency and creating real impact for their communities.

At the beginning of the meeting, the hosts warmly welcomed all the participants and shared their expertise and experience with regard to youth projects. In this context a special attention was given to the project MI.MOMO conducted by Faro municipality. It was followed by the thorough discussion about each of the partner assignments and common responsibilities. During two working sessions on March 21 and 22 the consortium agreed upon further steps regarding the project agenda i.a. deadlines for particular deliverables were set, information on a draft version of Communication and Dissemination Plan and visual identity components was presented etc.

A study visit which enabled all the members to learn more about the MI.MOMO project was also part of the event’s program. Persons who were directly involved in this project shared their thoughts and showed how it influenced young people from the municipality as well as other local residents. It raised awareness with regard to modernism architecture among the inhabitants and activated local community around the unnoticed part of local heritage. 

Last point on the official agenda was a Peer Learning Event that took place at Faro Town Hall on March 22. Partners presented best practice examples from their countries that used Minecraft as a successful tool for youth participation. Wide variety of projects was presented which gave the audience food for thought. This exchange of experiences had proved Minecraft to be a useful way of engaging young people that gives them a sense of empowerment and agency they need. The event was concluded after a series of remarks and comments. The knowledge acquired during this meeting will be utilized in the creation of “Minecraft as a youthful policy tool” – a digital document that will showcase Minecraft best practices.