Designing Democracy - Past, Present, and Future

At Knutepunkt this year, Larpocracy members Jon Back and Sarah Lynne Bowman from Uppsala University ran a design workshop. They invited fellow larpers to brainstorm larp and democracy in the past, present, and future.

The workshop was titled - Designing Democracy - Past, Present, and Future: An Explorative Workshop about Democracy as Theme and Topic for Larp.

The workshop, part of the new three-year Horizon Europe project 'Larpocracy,' began with an introduction to the project, and lucky larpers got the first look at what will happen over the upcoming three years.

In the workshop, Jon and Sarah explored democracy as a theme and topic. They gathered examples of larps that had been run with themes around democracy and the skills the group thought were developed during them. The team also looked into skills participants wished would be developed in the future. The ideas gathered will be used and incorporated into future larps to foster democratic skills through play.

During the workshop, questions such as 'What is democracy (in larp)?', 'How has it been addressed in the past?', 'What kind of democratic testing/prototyping could be done at larps?', and 'Can democratic skills—whatever they are—be taught through larp? ' were used to help stimulate conversation and ideas.