{"id":46899,"date":"2026-06-22T07:51:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T07:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sineglossa.it\/?p=46899"},"modified":"2026-06-12T08:02:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T08:02:51","slug":"the-new-be-your-hero-archetypes-how-is-a-superpower-represented-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sineglossa.it\/en\/news-en\/the-new-be-your-hero-archetypes-how-is-a-superpower-represented-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Be Your Hero archetypes: how is a superpower represented today?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

What the archetypes are<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

How are skills such as empathy, strength, curiosity, or wisdom represented today?<\/p>

For years, within the Be Your Hero<\/a> methodology, we have been using illustrated archetypes to help teenagers and young people recognize their own “superpowers”<\/strong>: relational, emotional, and soft skills that are often difficult to name, but which emerge in everyday behaviors, relationships, and choices.
Be Your Hero<\/strong> is the training project designed by Sineglossa to train life skills through collective experiences of sport and art. The archetypes are one of the symbolic tools of the path: they help participants reflect on themselves, observe their own behavior through the eyes of others, and narrate episodes of their lives starting from shared images and references.<\/p>

Over the last few months, while working on a new edition of the campus, we realized that those archetypes no longer fully represented the project. This is why today<\/strong> they are changing, becoming ecosystemic, zoomorphic, less anthropocentric, and closer to the imagination of the new generations.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t

Where the archetypes come from<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

In building this methodology and applying it to different target beneficiaries, we used characters and narrative references inspired by cinema and TV series to explain archetypes such as the explorer, the sage, the guardian angel, or the warrior.<\/p>

The goal has always been to simplify complex concepts through narrative thinking: using recognizable and well-known figures in common culture to help participants tell their stories, recognize recurring behaviors, and reflect on their own life skills.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t

Why we decided to change<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The redesign of the new archetypes stems from two needs.<\/p>

On one hand, we realized that some visual and narrative references <\/strong>were becoming less and less shared by the project’s beneficiaries<\/strong>.\u00a0Through discussions with educators trained by Sineglossa in the Be Your Hero methodology, we noticed that many of the cultural references<\/strong> used to describe the archetypes were no longer recognized.<\/strong><\/p>

When we asked what their spontaneous narrative references were, and we started reasoning by archetypal characteristics, new shared imaginaries emerged<\/strong>: for example, Luffy from One Piece as an untamed explorer, or Yoda and Albus Dumbledore as figures of wisdom.<\/p>

We understood that the potential of archetypes is expressed when they help people tell their stories in a personal way, not when they propose a model to imitate. This is why we chose to bring those references into the methodology’s revision process.<\/p>

In the second place, the redesign responds to the desire to overcome overly stereotyped representations<\/strong> of certain personal and character traits. Strength, for instance, took the form of physical strength in the old archetypes and was personified by a fighter. Instead, we wanted to move away from human, individualistic, or competitive imaginaries, which are distant from the way we imagine strength, care, relationship, and transformation today.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t

The new archetypes<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

We therefore asked ourselves: how can we represent strength without using warlike metaphors? And empathy without reducing it to a human stereotype? How can we build characters less tied to gender stereotypes and closer to an ecosystemic and relational vision? How can we step out of an overly anthropocentric vision?<\/p>

From these reflections, the new Be Your Hero archetypes were born<\/strong>, drawing inspiration from the animal and natural world<\/strong>:<\/p>