What lies behind children’s strong engagement with Money Carousel, and how is it connected with financial learning? How can the same educational format be implemented with different age groups, in different communities and educational settings?

The data collected through the initiative’s online Gallery made it possible to analyse in greater depth the experience accumulated during the first national edition of Let’s Spin the Money Carousel – Together!. The findings are presented in the analysis “Money Carousel”: Financial Education through Theatre, Participation and Community Engagement – Analysis of the Educational Format and the Initiative Model, developed by the Financial Literacy Initiative Foundation.

The findings reveal more than strong interest and positive reactions to the lesson-theatre. They show how children’s active participation is associated with financial learning, how wider circles of engagement with financial topics develop around them, and how the format can be adapted to different local settings.

The scale of the initiative made it possible to observe the format across a wide variety of settings. More than 120 performances took place in over 100 towns and villages, involving around 2,500 children and reaching audiences of more than 11,000 people. In the online Gallery, participating organisations shared information about their implementations and provided open-ended comments on their experience. It is the comments relating to 117 implementations that form the evidence base for the analysis. Report Data Money Carousel 2026…

What does the analysis show?

The lesson-theatre creates a highly engaging educational experience. Engagement goes beyond positive emotions and interest to include active participation, sustained preparation, creativity, collaboration and confidence. Importantly, these forms of engagement are built around the financial content itself: children work with it in order to make sense of it, recreate it and present it to others.

Active participation and financial learning emerge as strongly associated. In 66 of the 117 implementations analysed, there is specific evidence of understanding financial concepts, connecting them with everyday choices, demonstrating or explaining knowledge, asking further questions or continuing to learn. Even more telling is the relationship with active participation: of the 51 implementations containing evidence of learning through acting and creating, 38 also contain explicit evidence of learning or understanding financial content – almost three quarters.

This finding is also important for understanding how the format itself works. The performance is not simply a way for children to demonstrate what they have already learned. Preparing and creating it are part of the process through which they work with the financial content and make sense of it.

The format creates wider circles of engagement with financial topics. Parents, teachers, professionals and local partners become involved during the preparation, while the public performance extends this circle further to peers, families, institutions and the wider local community. In this way, the financial content reaches well beyond the children directly involved in the lesson-theatre.

A common educational foundation can be implemented across very different settings. Money Carousel has been implemented with different age groups, in schools, kindergartens, libraries and community centres, in large cities and small communities, and with varying levels of resources. Local organisations adapt the implementation to their own setting while preserving the core financial content and the mechanism of active participation. The analysis provides compelling evidence of the high transferability of the format.

The decentralised model of the initiative also plays an important role. The organisers provide the common concept, script, methodology and materials, while local organisations take responsibility for preparation and implementation in their own setting. This allows the common educational foundation to be adapted to different groups, institutions and local contexts.

Taken together, the findings point to two interconnected strengths of Money Carousel: a lesson-theatre in which active engagement with financial content is part of the learning process and generates wider engagement with financial topics, and a decentralised model that enables the format to be adapted and implemented repeatedly across different local settings.

Behind these findings are dozens of different local stories – children stepping into the roles of financial characters, teachers and parents becoming involved in the preparation, and audiences continuing the conversation after the performance. It is through this diversity of implementations that we can see how a common idea for financial education can come to life in different ways in each local community.

The full analysis, “Money Carousel”: Financial Education through Theatre, Participation and Community Engagement – Analysis of the Educational Format and the Initiative Model, is available here.