This is not a drill!

The times are changing, so do the disasters: shootings in shopping malls, climate change or Brexit! The instabilities of the current times are not connected to a single political enemy anymore. They seem to come from an undefinable black box of unforeseeable events which are striking unexpectedly – more dangerous and elusive than ever before. Is anyone ready for that?

How can we prepare for those new types of emergencies? Can toys become tools to tame the modern dangers?

As a prelude for my master thesis we collected in a workshop format, strategies how to deal with the current times and craft the new playgrounds for the upcoming catastrophes. What are we afraid of? What our parents or grandparent weren’t? Allergies? Climate Change? Or Synthetic Biology?

A series of analog maps for speculative playgrounds and fears was the result of the collaborative design session.

The workshop ‚This is not a drill!’ took place at the 26th of November 2017 at the University of Arts in Berlin.