Abstract:

The concept of safe spaces, as is understood and discussed in this paper, relates to how systemic marginalization creates normalized oppression in a way that deems societies as more unsafe to the underprivileged. In the pages to follow we will discuss how we can create a premise that presents these concepts, and actively promotes the creation of direct democratic social contracts to transcend them in adult education practice, through the practice of gamification as implemented in the SAFE project.
The ERASMUS+ project SAFE-Safe spAces For lEarning, coordinated by EPATV from Portugal is running for almost three years now with partners from all over Europe, and more specifically, VHS Vienna, from Austria, DAFNI KEK from Greece, Patatrac from Italy along with the EAEA- European Association for the Education of Adults from Belgium representing the European perspective and the ICAE- International Council for Adult Education from Serbia tackling global developments. As a consortium we started with the assumption that inclusion means holistic and systemic change not provided by a one-way effort but by society as a whole and adult education is at the core of such a change. To do so the ALE community will have to consider:
“How does recognising privilege and struggle, safety and unsafety, access and inaccessibility can relate to the way that we exist in both our learning practice and society at large?”
Safe spaces are places (in the wider sense, including virtual spaces) where people are free to express their own opinion, without being stigmatized, safe spaces are characterised by trust in the group and the “trainer”; they are a space where people are not confronted with different opinions, there is no manipulation, there are no judgements; safe spaces are free of formal and external evaluation. Learners have the certainty of knowing the structure, the procedures and the goals. Some classrooms might be safe spaces.However, as hooks (1994:39) points out, even in the absence of explicit antagonism or discomfort, “many students, especially students of colour[or any other minority group, we might add], may not feel at all ‘safe’ in what appears to be a neutral setting”. As such, safe spaces should be understood not through static and acontextual notions of “safe” or “unsafe”, but rather through the relational work of cultivating them.
In this paper we will showcase how the SAFE consortium team co-created with the broader adult education community the SAFE Boardgame as a liberating way to explore answers to the aforementioned questions and provide us outlets to communicate change and elaborate on safe spaces. The boardgame, to do that, facilitates the co-confoguration of direct democratic social contracts between the players, establishing the particularities of oppression, challenge and struggle that arise in different group dynamics, relating to societal and systemic paterns.
The material and research included in this paper gathers form the sum of the results of the project namely: 1) The Safe Spaces for Learning Guide: How to create and maintain a safe space for adult learning, 2) Safe Spaces in everyday life: The Why, the What, the Who the Where and the How., 3) The visual library of existing safe spaces for adult education, 3) The S.A.F.E. Boardgame and 4) The SAFE Policy Paper: Sustaining Safe Space Mentalities

Keywords:

Safe spaces, adult education, adult learning, direct democracy, social contract, gamification, board game.