Young people, maintenance and circularity: how an escape room writes the next chapter in Repair Teens

Repair Teens is built on a simple yet powerful idea: when young people experience for themselves how to maintain and repair things, circularity becomes concrete, tangible, and fun. In schools and organisations, young people worked with real devices, tools, and practical cases. They discovered that maintenance and repair are not boring “background tasks”, but activities that play a key role in safety, reliability, and sustainability.

In the new project, this experience was further translated into an escape room concept. Instead of isolated exercises, young people step into a story: they are challenged to solve puzzles as a team, work creatively with reused materials, and tackle technical problems. Along the way, themes such as maintenance, lifetime extension, material flows, and energy use naturally come into play. The circular escape room is therefore a logical continuation of Repair Teens: the same content and values, but packaged in an immersive, game-based format that strongly appeals to young people.

Repair Teens is a collaboration between the Techniekacademie, VIVES University of Applied Sciences, and project partners BEMAS vzw, POM, Repair&Share (known from the Repair Cafés), and a group of industrial partners. The goal of Repair Teens is to inspire 12- to 14-year-olds to become enthusiastic about maintenance and STEM, and to show them how maintenance enables them to make a positive contribution to a more sustainable world.

Repair Teens was carried out with the active support of the Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VLAIO).

During the project, the escape room concept was tested through three pilot trajectories, each in a different context.

At VIVES, young people worked together with the municipality of Wevelgem to create their own escape game. They began by playing and analysing an existing escape room, Food Factory, at the Huis van de Voeding. This helped them discover which types of puzzles work, how to build tension and flow, and which materials can be used. They then designed their own circular adventure step by step, filled with riddles and challenges. This culminated in a final test: a large birdcage with gifts, locked with a code that could only be cracked if all previous puzzles had been solved correctly. The game showed that by thinking together, using materials wisely, and persevering, you can literally “unlock new possibilities.”

At PXL, young people took part in a three-day programme focused on collaboration and inclusion. One of the participants was completely blind, which required extra attention to how puzzles were constructed. The group searched for tasks that could be solved through sound, touch, or cooperation. What could have been a limitation became a source of creativity: the young participants had to consider different ways of presenting information and dividing roles.

At Thomas More, twenty pupils from the fifth and sixth year of primary school participated. The group was highly diverse, both intellectually and socially, which made the process more challenging. It proved difficult to complete a fully finished escape room with this group. However, this was not a failure, but an important learning moment. The partners saw firsthand how much guidance levels can vary depending on the target group and age, how much structure some groups need, and which additional support is required when working with tools, technology, and abstract concepts such as circularity.

From the pilots and the steering group, a clear picture emerged of what is needed to make a circular escape room with young people truly successful.

A first insight is that technical basic skills and safety must be explicitly integrated. Young people do not automatically have experience with drilling, sawing, screwing, or using tools safely. A clear introduction with demonstrations, safety instructions, and simple practice moments is therefore not a “nice to have,” but a fixed and essential part of the concept.

A second lesson concerns inclusion and accessibility. The escape room only truly works when everyone can participate, regardless of vision, language skills, motor skills, or prior knowledge. This means that puzzles must be designed to be approachable in multiple ways, and that roles within the team are thoughtfully distributed. The PXL trajectory made this need very tangible.

In addition, the pilots confirmed how important it is to make circularity tangible. By literally working with their hands—reusing components, selecting materials, thinking about what to repair and what to replace—young people directly experience what it means to avoid waste and extend a product’s lifespan. The escape room becomes a story about sustainability, but without moralising: the game engages young people naturally.

Finally, there proved to be a clear need for a ready-to-use blueprint for teachers, youth workers, and companies wanting to work with the concept. Not everyone has the time or experience to design an escape room from scratch. That’s why the partners developed a blueprint containing a step-by-step guide, example puzzles, practical tips, points of attention regarding safety and inclusion, and concrete examples from the pilot projects. This material helps organisations build their own version faster and with more confidence.

BEMAS was already one of the core partners in Repair Teens and built on that role further in this follow-up project. From its position as the Belgian association for maintenance and asset management, BEMAS connects the world of education, young people, and circularity with the reality of industrial companies.

In the steering group and in the development of the escape room, BEMAS contributed examples, stories, and real-life issues from the practice of maintenance and asset management. This ensures that themes such as downtime costs, reliability, preventive maintenance, spare parts, and lifetime extension are explicitly reflected in the puzzles and scenarios. In this way, young people get a glimpse of the challenges that maintenance and asset managers face every day.

In addition, BEMAS uses insights from other projects on circular maintenance and sustainable asset management practices to strengthen the content of the escape room concept. The escape room not only shows that repairing is better than throwing away, but also makes the link with more efficient use of resources, energy, and raw materials, as is done in industry.

A third important contribution lies in the dissemination and embedding of the project results. Through the BEMAS website, newsletters, projects, and networks, the blueprint and the final report are shared with maintenance and asset management professionals, schools, and partner organisations. In this way, the escape room gains a life beyond the project period, as an additional tool within the broader BEMAS efforts to inspire young people for a career in maintenance, reliability, and asset management.

Although the project around the circular escape room has formally come to an end, the story is far from finished. The developed blueprint and the collected experiences provide a solid foundation for new initiatives. Schools and universities of applied sciences can use the materials to build their own escape room or adapt an existing version to their context. Companies, youth organisations, and Repair Cafés can apply the concept during company visits, open days, or youth internships as an accessible way to open the doors to technology, maintenance, and circularity.

For BEMAS, this project fits perfectly within a broader movement: helping young people discover that maintenance and repair are not only crucial for a well-functioning industry, but also for a circular and future-proof society. If young people experience this playfully in an escape room, the chance becomes even greater that they will later help tackle the real challenges in maintenance and asset management.