LARP Adventure Program offers educational enrichment that fosters empowerment and self-expression. Through 21st Century Multiple Literacies methods, we encourage students to learn through experience. We believe that the most important lessons are learned by doing, rather than just conceptualizing. Imagine being Michael Faraday and discovering electromagnetic fields, instead of just reading about him. Imagine being Queen Elizabeth I or Cleopatra, instead of learning about them in class. Do you think you would understand the subjects better? Do you think it would be more interesting to learn this way? We believe everyone has the potential to be amazing people, both for our own sake and others. Our goal is for each of us to Discover our Personal Legend through arts based community and the power of our collaborative imagination. 

Our Heroes Academy® is a collection of curriculums and workshops that take place in an after school program or day camp setting. In this setting, we learn multiple intelligence methods- some people are visual learners, some logical, and some learn best by interacting with others. We use multiple teaching techniques to best teach youth in the program. We combine this with narratives for personal development. Students learn the literacies of LARP. Through LARP, students can learn how to communicate with others through interdisciplinary and multiple intelligence methods.

Our curriculum for middle school students focuses on community and social skills, building confidence, and supporting a group identity.

Our teen curriculum (The Marshals Academy®) focuses on learning leadership skills, how to hold space for others. This means that they learn how to run an event, create a supportive learning environment, and make sure everyone has fun. Teens learn how to nurture themselves and community projects. These workshops also focus on creating positive models for the youth in the program.

Curriculum

Inspiration – Creation – Formation – Manifestation

At LARP Adventure Program, we believe that through nurturing one another in a community arts based environment, we can discover our personal legends and reach self-actualization. The LARP Adventure Program experience and curriculum are based on community interdisciplinary arts, 21st century skills, multiple and emotional intelligence education. This approach to community arts and education allows each participant’s true self to shine. In turn, the participant nurtures and feeds the growth and development of the community. In this process of shared self-actualization, the community as a whole is inspired, creative juices flow, minds are motivated and the path to greatness is manifested

Live-action roleplaying can take many forms and can be used to create many things. It is an integration of theater, sports, and a variety of interdisciplinary arts. It’s a place where communities can form and take shape. In our LARP, we take the approach of Transformational Leadership through theatre. We take inspiration from old-world customs and ancient traditions. We uphold our personal and community principles to work towards community and global transformation. We support multiple intelligence learning methods, as well as nurturing inspiration and creation. Through this, we encourage self-empowerment, allowing participants face challenges and address fears in an environment where they feel safe and supported. Our goal is to teach 21st century skills, without losing the historical context of tradition. Through our program we seek to help youth develop and to give them a place where they can practice self-exploration and transformation, discovering their inner power and truths. We encourage each other to do amazing things.

What We Value

• Community rather than personal gain
• People rather than profits
• Equality rather than authority
• Similarities rather than differences
• Compassion rather than competition
• Forgiveness rather than judgment

Personal Principles taught

• Modesty
• Courtesy
• Integrity
• Self Control
• Perseverance
• Indomitable Spirit

Heroes Academy® Year Curriculum at a Glance

• September/October – Intrapersonal and Existential Intelligence: Character creation and developing the hero within.
• November/December – Spatial Intelligence: DIY projects, designing and making the tools of the trade.
• January/February – Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence: Movement, martial arts, yoga, team building adventure based games.
• March/April – Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: LARP literacy, learning the game’s function.
• May/June – Musical, Linguistic and Interpersonal Intelligences: LARP literacy, learning the narrative form
• July/August – Naturalist Intelligence: Summer camps, expeditionary immersive education and and community celebration.

HEROES ACADEMY® EVENTS

LARP Adventure Program weekend and week long events are designed to utilize inquiry based learning, a method of education where participants have the agency to learn in a way that’s best for them. In this expeditionary learning setting, adventure is the key element to education. Our original interactive and improvisational theater game creates a world in which students act as a heroic character within a larger overarching story. Through acting out the plot of the story, characters evolve and grow, and the players discover their own personal legend.

In this setting we emphasize community, communication, and divergent thinking. We foster a safe space for exploring real-life emotions and life skills through role play.

Enjoyable aspects include:

• Collaborating with friends to create a story
• Discovering your own personal narrative through creating a character
• The opportunity to overcome challenges and face fears in a safe, adventure-based environment
• Pursuing your character’s objectives, learning both how to win and how to process failure. 

Through this play we can make facing obstacles fun with celebrating collaboration. When doing so participants engage in high-level, critical literacy and develop 21st century skills. Role-play within LARP gives participants a way to socialize and make meaningful connections. These connections can be engaging, confronting or even challenging. By interacting with different people and different environments, participants can change their current perspectives and learn about new strategies, stances, and concepts. These methods mean that LARP give students a means of learning together while having fun. 

Some of the benefits of LARP are:

• A place to try on new identities
• A place to try new social dynamics
• A place to challenge your own ideas and beliefs

“[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” – Jim Henson

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet Discover and create.” – Albert Einstein

“A single dream is more powerful than 1000 realities.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

“Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth.  The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung