When escaping becomes fun
An escape room is an exciting and fun way of spending free time. It offers an opportunity to “escape” from our day-to-day routine to a place of unpredictable turns and adventures. We have always wanted to experience this exciting magic of an escape room. Unfortunately, we could not, since it was either architectually inaccessible or motorically too challenging. When we heard that Tehno park Celje is planning a solidarity project titled The (dis)ABILITY TO ESCAPE, which aims at creating an escape room adapted to people with disabilities, we gladly accepted the invitation to participate. Our team consists of seven students and Aneja Tahirović as our mentor.
Our goal is to design an escape room accessible to the disabled and their assistants in Tehno park that will offer exciting but easy to solve tasks for the disabled. As disabled team members, our primary job in the project is to share our opinion regarding task feasibility with other members. After our introductory meetings, we became familiar with the building of Tehno park and its facilities, including the advantages and restrictions that we had to consider while planning the escape room. We excluded items, wich were not appropriate for the disabled and included those that we can use in an entertaining and logical manner.
Other team members took our suggestions seriously and openly. We had to discuss which item fits in a particular category of disability. We also encountered specific challenges handling the items due to our different types of cerebral palsy. We decided the tasks would be based on natural sciences and technology. We made sure that task solving would involve plenty of logical thinking and fewer physical activities.
If visitors face any challenges while solving clues, their assistants give them a hand.
There will be plenty of teamwork and collaboration and above all plenty of carefree socialising and fun which we will undoubtedly need after these strange times. During the project, we have the opportunity to develop various competencies and skills: communication, teamwork, learning about different categories of disabilities, mathematical and logical skills, financial and space planning, reasoning, problem-solving, forming clear instructions and team coordination.
The work on the project is going smoothly and is very enjoyable. We hope we reach our goal and our visitors enjoy the escape room and learn something new. Additionally, we hope this project will be another stepping stone to a more inclusive image of free-time activities of the disabled. The escape room is scheduled to oen in the spring of next year. We welcome anyone who wants to experience something different and exciting.
# (dis)ABILITY TO ESCAPE - Solidarity project of the European Solidarity Corps program
Agnes Kojc and Mihela Bauman
Participants of the project (dis)ABILITY TO ESCAPE in Tehno park Celje