On May 16th 2023, the EUARENAS project consortium welcomed politicians, citizens, academics, and practitioners to the project’s "Democracy Action Day" to co-create our visions for the future of participatory democracy in Europe.
A trip down memory lane
First off, participants had the opportunity to explore the fascinating local visions collected by our partners from Finland, Italy, Poland, Estonia, and Germany. It was intriguing to discover the similarities and differences, and even stark contrasts, among these visions as they were presented side by side. For instance, the elderly residents in Helsinki created a vision board based on their neighbourhood maps, while the young people of Gdansk in Poland built their vision with LEGO bricks. The neighbourhood representatives of Reggio Emilia expressed their desired future using a word tree. Throughout these cities, the wish for a stronger sense of community and environmental preservation resonated consistently.
Building democracy, one (LEGO) brick at a time
Drawing inspiration from the local visions and armed with our own ideas and experiences, we formed diverse groups of people from different nationalities and backgrounds. Together, we embarked on the task of constructing participatory spaces for Europe, with each group focusing on one theme like greenery, administration, culture, and housing. After completing our ‘built environments’, we presented them and also examined the similarities and differences between our visions for ideal spaces and the current reality.
About Foresight in EUARENAS:
Foresight, Work Package 5 of EUARENAS, gives citizens the space and voice to envision the democracy they desire for themselves. Previously, we have looked at traditional media, people’s stories, and social medias as source materials for future changes.
The practices and findings from our future scenario events will be synthesised into a report combining the data analysis from the work package to produce future scenarios in the field of deliberative and participatory democracies.