Facts
About
A number of national and international studies indicate that most democracies are troubled by a declining legitimacy and that public support is waning. These studies also show that many citizens feel disconnected and alienated from representative democracy, by which they do not feel properly representedand with few meaningful avenues towards participation.
It is within such a context of democratic decline that this research project suggests to strengthen trust in democracy by designing new, local spaces and opportunities for participation where citizens can rehearse their democratic agency closer to everyday life
Objective
Moving beyond known formats such as voting and debating, the project examines how the participatory repertoire can be expanded to include the body and physical materials, representing a more comphrensive spectrum of the human experience - head, hands and heart.
The project frames the Danish tradition of “skrammellegepladser” as a public, political space akin to the agora, forum or square with the potential to inspire us to think differently about democratic participation. These playgrounds may be understood as both a metaphor and an actual space where democratic participation can extend beyond rational debate to include the body and physical materials in lively experimentation and negotiation.
Methods and results
By connecting these fields of research, the project develops a robust, theoretical framework to better understand and design for experimental forms of democratic participation.
The project is rooted in research-through-design, and programmatic design research more specifically, which means that it evolves through a series of design experiments as interventions. Here the project also puts an emphasis on the early process of inviting participants to join the research process, examining how to evoke curiosity and manage expectations in fruitful ways.
Rooted in the theoretical framework and the empirical experiments, the project will develop a more practically oriented design approach that can inspire and support new designs for democratic participation.
