We do not hand out certificates the way you hand out leaflets. We build, step by step, a paper that stands up in front of an employer, a trainer or a jury.
Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) was an English children's doctor and a psychoanalyst. He spent his life watching children play. What he discovered fits into a few simple ideas, and those ideas guide our whole way of teaching.
When you play, you can take something, change it, get it wrong and start again, safely. Winnicott places play in a space between what is in your head and the world around you: a place where you can ask "what if…?".
For him, it is in playing that a child, like an adult, is free to be creative and to use their whole personality. Inventing, searching, understanding: it all starts there.
You only play if you feel secure: nobody will laugh, nobody will punish a mistake. That is why our first step is shared rules of the game, the same for everyone.
Winnicott told carers: if someone cannot play, that block is what you look at first. A teacher, on the other hand, aims to enrich. We teach, we do not treat; but we know how to recognise that block, and we make it our starting point.
Further reading: D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (1971) and Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry (1971).
Sometimes the fear of getting it wrong blocks everything. You stop asking questions, you wait, you say "I can't do it" before you have even tried. We call this cognitive inhibition (a modern word, not Winnicott's). For us it is not a fate: it is a signal. When the block gives way, learning starts again, often very fast. Overcoming it is our first sign of success.
Each link holds on to the one before, like the links of a chain. We skip none of them: that is what makes the whole thing solid.
It all starts with shared rules of the game: you come, you are on time, you respect the others, you do what you said. It is the ground everything else is built on.
Each activity in the training is linked to one precise skill, written down in advance. For example: "explaining an idea to someone who does not know it". No vagueness: you know what you are trying to learn.
The skill is shown in a real situation, one that can be watched: presenting your game to the group, sharing out the work, settling a disagreement. That is where you see the difference between "I know" and "I know how".
A person from the right field watches and writes down what they saw: a professional, the head of an association, a trainer or a jury. A paper is worth what the person who signs it is worth.
The signed papers are filed together, by families of skills, and pile up over time, like the pages of a notebook. Nothing is lost.
At the end of the chain: going back to school, taking a certification, having what you already know how to do recognised (VAE), entering a course, choosing a trade. It is the door that opens, very often the one you thought was shut.
A paper is only worth something if the person who signs it is the right one. We work with four fields, which complete each other:
A game activity is never a game "for nothing". Each one is designed in advance as a brick: it works on one precise skill, it ends with a signed paper, and it has its place in a whole. Day after day, everyone lays their bricks: first the foundations, then the walls, then the roof. That is their professional house.
That is why the game cannot be separated from our guidance engineering. The guidance team follows each person and the group: it looks at which bricks are laid, which are missing, and helps choose the next one. And a brick once laid does not fade: it is written down and signed. What is built stays built.
These tools were not invented in an office. They were tested with political figures, people for whom everything happens in front of others. Two things came out of it, which we apply to guidance.
Learning to hold a public role without cheating: every promise stated with who decides, what it costs and when it can be checked. You play the scene, play it again, correct it. For a young person it is the same: introducing yourself to an employer means holding a role, and that is learnt by playing.
After a setback, a group comes apart quietly: people come less often, one person carries everything, someone leaves without a word. A dedicated team draws the group's places and links with it, follows a few simple signs every month, and decides what to repair. The same gestures keep a group of learners together until the end.
The lesson is the same for everyone: you make progress when you dare to play a role, and when you are not left alone. This work was carried out within a written framework, regardless of political side, never targeting voters; the people supported are not named.
Winnicott will be useful to us wherever someone first has to dare to try in order to learn. It is already the case in the video game "La Lettre", made by the company: in the middle of the night, three characters who cannot pay start playing a role, then creating.