pARTicipation

Content

What the fact? – When facts don't work

Society is facing major challenges. Issues such as climate change, social injustice, digital and urban transformation, voter fatigue, the threat to human rights or - as recently in the pandemic - science-based political decisions are complex and multifaceted. This is countered by increasing populism, which very successfully plays the keyboard of negative emotions to manipulate constructive debates in favour of its own agenda. Facts often don't work. At the same time, we often view emotionality in social discourse as fundamentally rather dubious or overwhelming. Yet elections, for example, are something highly emotional.

Quo Vadis Society? – From the podium to the kitchen table

How can highly emotional topics, which current discourses repeatedly fail to address, be made empathetically tangible, tangible and thus communicable? How can the potential of citizens AND decision-makers be activated sustainably? Decision-makers get things moving. But what actually moves them themselves? And how do we create cooperation on an equal footing that also addresses our own perceptions and competencies in a new way? Answering these questions requires not only the formation of new alliances and work networks, but also an emotionally “affirmative” and participatory approach.

Crea(c)tivity

With partners from science, politics, culture, business and (political) education, we have developed concepts with which complex content can be made tangible and understandable in a participatory way. Be it on the political stage, on the street, on the Internet, in a classroom or at your kitchen table. Together with the Fraunhofer Institute's EU office in Brussels, we invite you on December 3rd, 2024 to travel along a few stops and try out some of our formats for yourself together with other multipliers.

The challenges are great, but Max Roser, a scientist in Oxford, says:

It is easy to be cynical about the world and claim that nothing is getting better. Fortunately, empirical research says the opposite. The world is much more malleable than you think: and it is just waiting for you to hammer it into the right shape. – Max Roser

Where the journey ends up depends (not only) on you.

Program

Where is the problem? – Practical Possibilism and walkable think tanks

Can statistics come to life? Are facts a question of attitude? Can waffles win elections? Can lettuce stop climate change? And what if the EU were a person? As part of our two-hour event, we will take you on an audio walk into the future, explore walk-in think tanks, hold talks with character and let you find problems for those solutions you didn't even know you had in networked game formats.

Cooperation: Pursuing common goals through division of labor

In practical exercises and using examples from our own work, we will examine how the search for the "right" partners can be organized, cooperations can be established, content can be researched in a targeted manner and which forms of design and expression can be devised - be it for face-to-face formats or in the digital space.

Practical Possibilism: The attitude of only addressing problems that one 1. can solve and 2. wants to solve, trusting that there is a suitable person with the necessary skills for every problem

Start: 10:00 am
Duration: 2 Hours
Note: It is recommended to bring weatherproof clothing.

What we can do is change our thought patterns, word by word, consciously and consistently, and stick to them until we see results in the way we do things and the consequences. – Tsitsi Dangarembga

About us (and our partners)

The multi-award-winning Brachland Ensemble, with locations in Cologne, Nuremberg, Hamburg and Brussels, has been one of the leading artistic collectives in the fields of participatory methodology and cross-sector project development for years and has increasingly established itself as an important cooperation partner for municipalities, ministries and institutions promoting the common good with regard to citizen participation, stimulus and transparency for socio-political processes and new interactive forms of communication in the face-to-face and digital event sector.

In dealing with sometimes complex, socially relevant topics such as the report on the CIA's internment and interrogation program, the effects of civic engagement on (EU) politics or scientific topics such as empathy, the human brain, biodiversity and climate change, artificial intelligence or the city of the future, not only are a wide variety of presentation and communication formats developed, but also a large network of cooperating experts from a wide range of disciplines such as (natural) science, politics, the media, education, psychology and sociology is formed. These include organizations such as Amnesty International, UNESCO Germany, numerous international municipalities, universities at home and abroad, various civil society actors as well as associations, ministries and international state representations.

It is not uncommon for the previous production to form the content basis for the next one, and the insights gained form the conceptual breeding ground for the next step. In 2021, the Brachland Ensemble was invited by the German Federal Ministry of Economics to a digital get-together to create new concepts for the (urban) living spaces of the future together with minds from science, business, education and politics. For 2025, we plan to set up an international think tank in Brussels to (further) develop participatory methods.

Art and culture are not like cream on a cake that you add when you are doing well, but they are the yeast in the dough.
– Johannes Rau

Location

The event will take place in the European Quarter in Brussels, the exact meeting point will be announced in due course. We will endeavour to ensure accessibility.