Report · EVO – The Languages of Play · Macerata
From the table to reflection: Dadi, Maghi e Draghi at EVO 2026
A day divided into two complementary moments: an experiential workshop for teachers in the morning and a public event in the evening devoted to the transition from play to educational method.
Context
Play as an educational language
The 2026 edition of EVO – The Languages of Play turned Macerata into a city-wide laboratory devoted to the many forms of play: analog, digital, cultural, educational and social.
Within this context, the Dadi, Maghi e Draghi project offered a day specifically focused on role-playing as a learning environment: not a lesson “about games,” but a path beginning with concrete experience and leading to methodological reflection.
The University of Macerata took part in EVO 2026 as the event’s scientific partner, helping strengthen its cultural and educational dimension.
Morning · 10:00 AM–1:00 PM
The experiential workshop for teachers
The first part of the day was devoted to teachers. The idea was simple: before discussing classroom applications, everyone needed to sit at the table and play.
Participants directly experienced a short role-playing session, dealing with choices, unexpected developments, incomplete information, collaboration and the need to build a shared decision. These very dynamics then became the starting point for reflecting on possible educational applications.
The workshop also used simplified materials developed for the project: essential character sheets, visual aids and tools designed to reduce the initial burden of rules and leave more space for experience.
Experience before explaining
The starting point was play experienced first-hand, not a theoretical definition.
Observe the dynamics
Choice, negotiation, listening, error and the unexpected became pedagogical material.
Translate experience into method
The experience at the table was re-read in relation to classrooms, workshops and educational groups.
Evening · 6:00–8:00 PM
From play to method: in conversation with Stefano Polenta
The second part of the day, open to the public, shifted attention from the experience of play to its pedagogical interpretation.
The talk featured a conversation with Professor Stefano Polenta, who teaches General and Social Pedagogy at the University of Macerata. The dialogue connected role-playing practice with central educational themes: the role of the educator, freedom and rules, engagement, responsibility for choices, relationships and the shared construction of meaning.
The goal was not to turn play into a rigid technique, but to ask what happens when a group is invited to imagine, choose and act together within a system of rules.
Photo gallery
The workshop at the table
Some moments from the experiential workshop: group discussion, simplified materials, maps, dice and shared choices.
Public talk
From play to method
One day, two perspectives
From doing to understanding
The two-part event brought together two aspects that are inseparable in Dadi, Maghi e Draghi: the power of concrete experience and the need to reflect on how that experience is designed, guided and reworked.
The morning workshop showed what happens at the table; the evening talk created space to ask why certain dynamics work, which skills they activate and what responsibility belongs to the facilitator.
It is precisely in this passage — from play to method — that role-playing can become an educational resource without losing what keeps it alive: freedom, imagination, relationship and the possibility of choosing.
To learn more about the festival context:EVO – The Languages of Play e University of Macerata.
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