Practice Conference

The so-called Practice Conference was introduced as a fixed format for exchange with the approximately 40 organisations from the field that are directly involved in the 11 research projects in different settings. It is an alternative to the rather static format of the advisory council and is intended to reflect on the scientific work with the help of the practitioners.

The first Practice Conference of the network took place on November 15th, 2018 at the “Hochschule für Politik / TU München”. The practice partners of the eleven projects and some external experts from science, administration and art were invited. After input lectures on questions of participation and on a co-creative theatre science project of the “Deutsches Theater Berlin”, there was a lively exchange in the subsequent workshops. Topics included the concept of democracy itself and the many controversial understandings of it, as well as the question of how cooperation between science and practice can succeed and what it should serve. In the Blog post and in a picture gallery of the conference on Flickr you can get more detailed insights.

The 2nd practice conference was implemented in an online format on April 24th, 2021, including a preparatory meeting for joint preparation with partners from the field. The aim was to show the joint work with democracy actors from the field, to learn more from the field and to get closer in contact.

The 3rd practice conference is planned for June 24, 2022. This time, the focus will be on a summary and outlook of the collaboration – in workshops in the groups of the ForDemocracy subprojects, results and findings will be compiled and discussed. After the group work phase, there will be a panel discussion with representatives from practice and science on the topic of “Pleasure & Frustration of Participatory Research – Types of Results & Recipes for Success”. The location will be published in June.