Thinking with the hands: LEGO® Serious Play® a game-based tool to empower young migrants integrating

Abstract

In recent years, various low-threshold and often creative methods and tools have been developed, considering the specific requirements of vulnerable persons to explore their identities, experiences, knowledge, opinions and needs. The idea of LEGO® Serious Play® is based on play pedagogy. Playing allows to distance oneself from everyday life by sliding into a world of imaginations, ideas and utopias while concurrently keeping the ties to reality (Heimlich, 2015). LEGO® Serious Play® uses metaphors to enable participants to express playfully their thoughts and ideas. As the building process with Lego bricks is physical and haptic, LEGO® Serious Play® is a low-threshold method to work with vulnerable groups (Cavaliero, 2017). The following article will concentrate on the use of LEGO® Serious Play® as creative exploration method and its possibilities and limitations when used to empower young migrants in vulnerable conditions in the Germany and Luxembourg in the H2020 research project MIMY.