Karen Sikkema

Karen Sikkema is owner and creative designer at Living Story, a serious game company in The Netherlands specialised in game-based learning for almost 20 years.

With her team, she has designed many different serious games and experiences for cultural heritage and museums. She is also author of ‘Play Works’, a comprehensive handbook on game-based learning, which has won “Managementbook of the Year 2023” by a professional jury in The Netherlands.

Furthermore, she is guest lecturer at the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, key-note speaker (also in English) and trainer about game-based learning and serious gaming.

Karen Sikkema will be speaking at the Museums, Games & Play Summit 2024 :

Nova and the Memory Machine: learning about media archives through serious gaming

How do you show people -and especially kids- the value of preservation, the importance of an archive, the value of the conservation of numerous media files, pictures and films? Nova and the Memory Machine offers the visitor an exciting story combined with interactive challenges to show different themes around the importance of an archive: culture, heritage, family and media. The talk will show the design process from collecting the learning goals, translating them into a serious game and the execution of this physical game installation. We will also share the results and lessons learned.