Sacred springs: teaching children local history via a game jam

Game Jams are planned events in which attendees engage in practices of co-creation in an attempt to devise a game concept and prototype. They are designed to be fun, participatory, and stimulate creativity over a short intense period of time. We report on a recent Game Jam, Sacred Spring, aimed at educating children on the medical and scientific history of the Roman Baths in the city of Bath, UK. In this paper, we describe the event and its output, with some brief discussion on what we learned from organizing and running the game jam with a group of children aged 6-9 years old. Our aim is to discuss our Game Jam with the inclusive participatory design (PD) community, contextualizing novel game design and game play based learning strategies in the PD space, and devising ways to reach a broader audience in future workshops.