The Summer Parent-Child Game Jam 2025 @ The University of Tokyo was held on Saturday, August 23 and Sunday, August 24, 2025, at the Fukutake Learning Studio on the Hongo Campus. Hosted by the Fujimoto Laboratory, the event welcomed 10 child-guardian pairs. The children were aged from 9 to 14.

The theme of this year’s workshop was “Disaster Preparedness.” The workshop aimed to foster “creativity in daily life” by incorporating into game mechanics various challenges, such as cooperation during emergencies and the use of limited resources.

On the first day, participants played popular board games such as Splendor, Kingdomino, and Ubongo. This gave them the chance to explore diverse game design mechanisms while deepening interactions between parents and children as well as among participants. Parents also attended a lecture on “How to Engage with Children to Foster Creativity.”

On the second day, the participants tried their hands at game creation. Professional board game designers and editors joined to support the development of ideas. Through repeated prototyping and refinement, five groups produced six disaster-preparedness games, showcasing the combination of children’s free imagination and parental support.

Comments from the participants included the following: “Working with professional designers was invaluable,” “I learned a lot about supporting children—ideation, technical aspects, even note-taking methods,” and “It was wonderful seeing adults play the games we created. I want to try this again.” The venue was filled with excitement and a strong sense of accomplishment.

This event provided an excellent opportunity for children to nurture creativity, collaboration, and expressive skills, while parents and children shared valuable new learning experiences.

Text: Shoko Tange, Miwa Yokoyama ((Project academic specialist)
English proofreading: David Buist (Project senior specialist)