After completing the Participa City Train-the-Trainer course, our trainers moved into the next phase: designing and facilitating their own workshops in Germany. To understand how the methodology works in practice, we conducted interviews with trainers who had already implemented Participa City sessions in different educational and professional contexts.
The three workshops took place with Bachelor students preparing to become teachers, with a mixed group of school members during a self-organised project week, and with part-time Master’s students already active in various professional fields. Together, these experiences show both the common elements of the Participa City approach and the ways in which it can be adapted to different target groups, settings, and learning goals.
Three workshops, three contexts
A self-organised school project week
Trainers facilitated a half-day Participa City workshop with 18 participants over 18. The trainers selected four scenarios: sports, railway station, theatre group, and police. The pedagogical approach was strongly experiential: participants first experienced the situations through role play and only afterwards discussed and analysed what had happened. This sequencing allowed them to encounter potentially discriminatory situations before applying abstract terminology, and then to name and analyse their experiences collectively.
The trainers reported that the materials worked well but needed careful preparation. They also highlighted the value of working as a facilitation team, since roles such as introducing activities, supporting participants, and leading reflection can be shared.
Master’s seminar on diversity-sensitive leadership
One trainer from the educated Participa City trainer’s pool implemented a four-hour session as part of a part-time Master’s seminar on diversity-sensitive team leadership. The group included Master’s students already working in different professional fields and their professor.
The pedagogical framework was described as action-oriented and constructivist, with a strong emphasis on transferring theoretical knowledge about diversity into practical leadership situations. Two Participa City scenarios were used: railway station and company. This combination created a contrast between a public and a professional setting. The railway station allowed participants to explore discrimination, implicit bias, and processes of inclusion and exclusion in a public environment, while the company scenario shifted the focus towards team dynamics, institutional power structures, and diversity-sensitive leadership.
Bachelor’s programme for future teachers
Another trainer from the educated Participa City trainer’s pool trainer implemented a Participa City session with eight Bachelor students preparing for future professional roles as teachers. The trainer selected two scenarios that were not directly located in schools but nevertheless had a strong connection to educational contexts: kindergarten and police.
The kindergarten scenario was chosen because unequal treatment can already affect children in early educational settings. The police scenario provided an opportunity to address racial profiling and discriminatory experiences affecting young people. The trainer also took the regional context into account: the students are being trained in a rural area that is comparatively less diverse than larger German cities. The simulation therefore offered a way to explore forms of discrimination that might otherwise remain relatively abstract or less visible in the participants’ everyday environment.
Who were the gatekeepers?
The three implementations involved somewhat different groups of current or future gatekeepers.
At the vocational school, the participants were students at the end of their vocational education pathway. Although they were not yet established institutional gatekeepers, the training can be understood as an early preparation for future professional roles.
The Master’s students represented a different type of future gatekeeper. They were already working in different professional fields, including social pedagogy, mobile youth work, broadcasting, and human resources. Their Master’s programme focused on diversity-sensitive leadership, and many were preparing for positions involving team leadership. Their professional experience therefore provided an important basis for discussing discrimination not only as a social phenomenon but also in relation to organisational responsibilities and leadership.
The Bachelor participants were university students preparing for careers in education. Their future professional roles place them in direct contact with children and young people and therefore potentially give them significant influence over educational environments and everyday interactions.
Across all three settings, the trainers observed a generally high level of intrinsic motivation. Participants volunteered for roles and engaged actively with the scenarios, although their previous knowledge and personal experiences differed.
What these follow-up sessions tell us?
These three implementations show that the Participa City methodology can be adapted to very different target groups and settings while maintaining its core elements:
- experiential learning through role play
- structured reflection
- a focus on both individual and structural dimensions of discrimination.
Whether with vocational students, Master’s students in leadership roles, or future teachers, the game created space for participants to encounter discrimination from multiple perspectives, to connect their experiences with wider social patterns, and to consider concrete actions for more inclusive environments.
The trainers’ follow-up workshops also confirm the value of the Train-the-Trainer course: it equipped facilitators with the confidence, methodological understanding, and reflective stance needed to implement Participa City responsibly and effectively in their own contexts in Germany.