Kitchen table citizen panel and archives of the future
Context and general idea
The greatest threat to democracy at the moment seems to come in the form of an attack by ultra-rich people like Trump or Musk. That threat, however, is possible only because the basis of democracy, its values and daily practices embodying them, is eroding. Or at least that basis cannot keep up the pace with the change of the surrounding society, culture and technologies. As a result, also the other aspect of democracy, institutions, have become vulnerable. There is a dire need for adding a new tier of democratic institutions that would regenerate citizen power to match complex, long-term challenges of our era.
Democracy fundamentally relies on the will and action of people. Therefore, its basis cannot be reinforced in any other way than through greater/broader/wider mobilisation of people and doing so in new ways. Especially in cities that have a dual nature of being communities of people and palimpsests of (man-made) material world that impose strong path-dependencies and complex, perpetual structures of power (incl. financial).
We have heard time and time again that the current apathy is the result of the absence of a convincing vision, or perhaps multitudes of competing visions: Visions of good life, of liveable cities, humankind beyond sustainability transformation and planetary crisis. But where should that vision come from? If we were to follow democratic values the only credible source of such visions would be citizens, or perhaps conversations by citizens in the public sphere.
Task
Therefore, any citizen is entitled to start such a conversation that could explore elements of desirable futures. That could happen around a kitchen table, among friends, peers, neighbours or even among a random sample of acquaintances. Alternatively, it could take place around a virtual kitchen table, sharing visions and ideas of better futures across locations. Someone – and in this case it is YOU – has to take an initiative and invite people together.
And this is how it goes: Participants of the WPSC PhD Workshop are being assigned to citizen panels. After being assigned to a kitchen table (that is, your small group), schedule a 2-3 hour long online citizen panel with your fellow panelists.
Preparations: You should first individually prepare for a kitchen table citizen panel that aims to deliberate on a long-term vision for cities and planning. Start by thinking about the long-term futures of your own city and its place on the planet. Bring along to the virtual kitchen table items to build and, ultimately, archive your panel ideas. Those items can be your own notions on desirable futures, emotions and affects related to the future or things you observe in your material surroundings, on streets, homes, offices and public spaces.
Kitchen table panel: Having a meaningful exchange on visions and, subsequently, radical, alternative futures is not an easy task, however. There are various kinds of impediments restricting our imagination, narrowing the focus of our thinking and biasing our judgements. Therefore people too often end up looping around current, immediate challenges and widely circulating narratives that tend to dominate our attention through media, politics and the commercial world. We therefore suggest to run your kitchen table panel through the following steps:
a – general direction aka vision
b – archive & collect
c – how to use it for transformation
Steps, process and methods
What is needed is a) a method discovering a direction and stretching towards a vision, facilitating the conversation and documenting the results (so that it won’t end up being simply words vanishing in the air), b) an archive as a way of connecting conversations around various kitchen tables by collecting and sharing ideas, utopias and commitments between people and tables, and c) a script for a plan that outlines how to use the vision and its archived ingredients for a transformation.
a – The vision: Each panel participant describes and illustrates her vision for your own city and its place on the planet to other participants, and to document it for further use. We have to assume a wide enough understanding on how anticipatory attitudes and anticipatory systems as ingredients of visions appear: As assemblages that may contain materialities from streets, public spaces and other locations; historical narratives dominating current imaginaries; personal expectations; emotions and affects; various kinds of future-leaning practices, normative goals and utopias.
Kitchen table citizen panels should collect/build such anticipatory assemblages and help participants to make sense of the futures through constructive conversations on their respective assemblages. The task is to describe and illustrate the vision by each participant of a panel.
b – Archives of the future: Analyse and archive together items and ingredients of the visions. The power of the kitchen table citizen panel is that it creates experience based narrations of past-present-future. This is what makes it shareable with other people and capable of engaging other people under the same democratic practice. The situated assemblages brought into a panel should be collected as stories and images that include references to places, items, people and other actors, with their values, affects and other categories of anticipatory attitudes that help others in making sense of the future as experience in the panel and by panelists. For this we need a format for archiving, sharing and presenting vision and their auxiliary assemblages. This enables building empathy, aligning but also revealing a sense of (constructive) disagreement between other kitchen tables where archived visions can be re-visited and discussed. This also provides you with ideas of a future city (abstract or concrete).
c – Transformation: Sketch implementation of your vision. There have to be ideas for first steps. That can include ways to explain the vision to the next people outside the kitchen, ways of experimenting some of its components (either in the physical world or virtually/mentally), and ideas on how to take it to the streets of your city. Ideation should also include initial ideas on how to integrate your transformation to legacy institutions of democracy and materialities of the city. This is how you start building legitimacy for your vision and thereby reinforce democratic values!
Outcomes and documentation
We invite you to document your kitchen table panel, including all three steps (a-b-c), with various ways such as collages, videos, texts, pieces of artistic expression, music… and turn them into a three course kitchen-table-panel-menu for futuring the city – or something else.
As a concrete final outcome, your group should make a poster (size A1) to present the results of the panel during the PhD Workshop. Additionally, creative presentations are welcome.
Looking forward to seeing your archives of the future!
Step-by-step instructions
- You will be assigned to a small group by the organizers in April. Each group will get its own Teams folder and channel.
- Within your group, start a discussion either in Teams or in some other media, and decide the schedule and next steps for your pre-assignment.
- Together, reserve a minimum of 2–3 hours for running an online kitchen table citizen panel among your group. Decide the roles among the members of your group.
- Each participant makes preparations for the panel as described above.
- Run the online kitchen table citizen panel with your group. Follow the three steps (a-b-c) above.
- As a group, document your panel the best way you wish. Make an A1 poster (841 × 1189 mm) of the results of the panel (one poster per group).
- In addition, the group can plan and prepare some creative ways to present their results.
- The poster should be saved to the group’s Teams folder by 15 June.
- During the PhD workshop, your group will have 10 minutes to present your work to others. The organizers will print out the A1 posters ready for you.
- The group may use creative methods in their presentation.
- The poster exhibition will be visible during the whole PhD Workshop.
