Pirate School – Family Initiative Thurgau – Untersee -Rhine

With the world’s first pirate school, a family offer has been created in the Kreuzlingen-Untersee-Rhine region that uses storytelling to unite the various service providers in the region under a common theme. The opening ceremony took place on July 2, 2023 in the Seeburgpark in Kreuzlingen. The opening also marked the launch of the Pirate School web app with augmented reality function.

The Pirate School was built with funds from the new regional regional policy of the federal government and the canton of Thurgau.

As part of the “Thurgau Family Initiative”, Thurgau Tourism commissioned gutundgut to promote the “Kreuzlingen-Untersee-Rhein” region as an excursion and vacation destination for families. The Pirate School was created as a result of this process. The Pirate School is a game: tasks await the pirate students at various excursion destinations, enabling them to learn the skills of real pirates. As a reward, virtual items and pirate coins can be collected with the web app and stored in a virtual treasure chest. With the web app, children can equip themselves or the pirate school founders Zaus and Huberta with the pirate items they have collected and bring them into their own environment thanks to augmented reality.

Developing offers with regional stakeholders

In summer 2021, gutundgut developed the idea of the pirate school in several workshops together with all the key players in the Thurgau region.

The next step was to implement the idea in individual form on site with the individual service partners. In addition to the development of the story by the author Dan Wiener, scenographic interventions were made at the individual service partners in order to do justice to the play instinct of the little pirate school visitors. Based on the two pirate school founders “Zaus”, the little pirate, who decided at the age of three that he no longer wanted to grow up, and “Huberta”, the cunning crested grebe, a web app was programmed with Studio Freisicht. The app digitally connects around ten task and puzzle locations and 30 other excursion destinations, boat landings and Postbus stops.

Storytelling for the networking of offers

gutundgut works with the placemaking method, in which places of significance are “made” together with people. Stories are particularly valuable for giving places this meaning. For storytelling as a placemaking method, it is important that the local actors co-write and sustainably co-tell the story. With a carefully and consciously developed story
a common culture is developed, especially in complex and heterogeneous groups, which gives all members sufficient individual freedom, provides them with positive energy and at the same time integrates them into a common strategy.