The Cultural Game Jam Kit: Core Framework is the foundational methodology for the EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jams. Designed as an in-depth, comprehensive, and practical guide, it offers a complete and structured model for planning, facilitating, and delivering Cultural Game Jams. It combines four cultural-creative phases, Experience, Play, Imagine, and Create, with cultural lenses and categories to guide participants from initial exploration to the creation of playable prototypes.
The kit includes an extensive suite of methods, transition tools, role cards, and value cards to support a coherent, high-quality process. Together, these elements form a clear minimum viable model that ensures consistency, cultural depth, and meaningful youth participation across different sites and contexts. It enables organisers to create accessible, replicable jam experiences while maintaining a strong focus on cultural heritage, values, and collaborative creativity.
As part of the wider suite of four Cultural Game Jam Kits, the Core Framework serves as the methodological backbone. It is closely linked to the Quadruple Helix Cultural Innovation Ecosystem, where creative industries, cultural heritage institutions, higher education, and youth co-create cultural innovation. By establishing shared principles, language, and practices, the Core Framework provides the foundation on which the other kits build and evolve. As such, this kit has all the Method Cards and Transition Tools.
