How can Larpocracy’s research become practical guidance for designers? This question shaped a recent two-day meeting in Uppsala, where project partners began planning the forthcoming Democracy by Design toolkit.
With Larpocracy now past its halfway point, attention is turning towards its final outputs and how these can remain useful beyond the project’s lifetime. Members of Tampere University, Uppsala University, and Chaos League gathered to discuss how findings from Work Packages 2–6 can inform an accessible and actionable resource.
The meeting addressed four central questions: which key results should the toolkit include, who should it serve, how should the findings be presented, and how can their continued use be supported after the project ends? These discussions marked the beginning of translating research across several strands of Larpocracy into practical recommendations.
Scheduled for release at the end of August 2027, the Democracy by Design toolkit will offer actionable recommendations for designers of larp and larp-adjacent spaces. It will draw on the project’s work in four areas:
• Larp interventions.
• Larp scenario design.
• Lowering barriers to participation in larp-adjacent spaces.
• The design of larp festivals.
Bringing these areas together will connect insights from different settings and scales of practice, from individual scenarios to festivals and spaces that draw on larp’s participatory approaches.
The Uppsala meeting established a starting point for this collaborative process. As development continues, the focus will be on making Larpocracy’s findings useful to the people designing these experiences—and ensuring that the knowledge generated by the project can inform practice beyond its conclusion.
Follow Larpocracy for updates as the Democracy by Design toolkit takes shape.