Climate Citizenship in action

The new BELville workshop at the BELvue Museum immerses youngsters in the role of managers of a growing city, inviting them to make decisions and confront them with the impact of their choices.

Because a sustainable future, that can withstand the climate challenges is built today, the programmes ‘Democracy’ and ‘Climate, Environment, and Biodiversity’ of the King Baudouin Foundation have joined forces to offer a brand new workshop on climate citizenship. The goal is to raise awareness among youngsters about the challenges posed by climate upheavals and illustrate how these can impact our democratic societies.

Building a city for the future

During a half-day session, students are tasked with building BELville, a fictional expanding town, represented as a three-dimensional model. The young participants face a series of dilemmas they must resolve. A tree-lined park or a commercial square? Do we build homes near the river? Depending on their decisions, the city evolves physically, and three parameters are evaluated: climate, budget, and the well-being of the inhabitants.

The objective is not to build an ‘ecological’ city or to achieve a balance between the three parameters of climate, budget, and well-being, it is to show the difficulty of making political decisions on complex issues, the necessity of collective action and listening to different viewpoints, and to reflect on the long-term impact of their decisions.

Guided by a facilitator, the young participants exchange and debate to reach common decisions. The complexity of the decisions to be made is not overlooked; on the contrary, the young people sometimes need to cross-reference information and work with sources. Through time jumps, they are confronted with the impact on their city of a decision made in the past. They realise the necessity of being well-informed, thinking about long-term issues, and thus learn to guard against simplistic narratives.

The workshop’s dynamics mobilise different and complementary skills present in a group: expressing one’s opinion, listening to other points of view, and arguing respectfully. More creative profiles are utilised in the personalisation of the city itself, by assembling buildings or giving them the shape of their choice.

The scenarios proposed in BELville are based on hypotheses submitted to scientists. The BELvue Museum’s educational team has thus surrounded itself with a committee of experts on climate issues, composed of university professors and representatives from the associative sector.

BELville was developed by the BELvue educational service, at the initiative of the ‘Democracy’ and ‘Climate, Environment, and Biodiversity’ programmes of the King Baudouin Foundation. The creation of the game was entrusted to Pièce Montée. The workshops are held only in French and Dutch.