Organisers: Nadja Van der Weide, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and Amsterdam University of the Arts (Netherlands).

Weekly gatherings at Framer Framed, Modestraat, Buikslotermeerplein, and Naardermeerstraat in Amsterdam Noord (Netherlands), March-April.

This Place evolved through a constellation of ongoing weekly artistic and dialogical gatherings in Amsterdam-Noord, centered around the intertwined projects Fabric of Us and De Ont/moeting – neighbourhouse on wheels. Existing community infrastructures and relationships shaped the process continuously. Weekly quilting and storytelling sessions within Fabric of Us created space for participants to collectively reflect on belonging, memory, and collective responsibility through textile-making – themes that directly reflect lived experiences and urgencies within Amsterdam-Noord. 

Alongside this, De Ont/moeting hosted open-ended encounters in public squares and marketplaces, where residents, social workers, artists, policy makers, and local organizations gathered around food, dialogue, and creative exchange. What began as an exploration of radically participatory forms of hosting gradually became a lived inquiry into reciprocity, ownership, care, and collective belonging in action. Through quilting sessions, zine-making workshops, neighborhood encounters, and dialogic dinners, participants co-created temporary commons where tacit knowledge, personal stories, and shared making could emerge across differences in age, background, and expertise, allowing participants to articulate tensions around local urgencies.

Organisers: Elvia Vasconcelos, Kristina Andersen, Eindhoven Technical University (Netherlands), Catherine Wieczorek, Carl DiSalvo, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), Josymar Rodríguez Alfonzo, Hasselt University (Belgium), Laura Forlano Northeastern University (USA).

• Atlanta (USA) – At Freeside Atlanta with Fulton County Public Art Futures Lab, the AIAI Network, and the Public Design Studio, April 4th
• Lisbon (Portugal) – In partnership with Colombina Clandestina artivist collective, April 18th
• Hasselt (Belgium) – During “This holds debris together” Living exhibition at @Beginhof Living Lab at Hasselt University, February 26th-March 5th

The Table here is a site for collective inquiry through participatory making in three locations: Atlanta, USA; Lisbon, Portugal; Hasselt, Belgium. We explore tables as both literal and symbolic spaces where participants gather as existing publics or as emerging ones, coming together in response to a shared call. By introducing a design provocation in the form of a workbook, containing narratives, prompts, and instructions for creating a table, we ask: (1) What possibilities do material practices around a table offer for organising collectively? (2) What tensions might they allow us to engage and question? (3) What might our engagements with tables render visible? 

We propose that experimenting with distributed reconfigurations of tables, whilst closely attending to the embodied and material aspects within such gatherings, brings about expanded understandings of collective making.

In Atlanta, a 2-hour workshop guided conversation where participants could map their own practices and surface the questions, challenges, and potentials AI raises for their creative community. Together, they moved toward a shared manifesto that articulates what matters, what feels at stake, and how we might respond collectively. 

In Lisbon, several one-to-one sessions with the Colombina Clandestina (CC) members, and a workshop with the collective. The workshop was organised around a paper roll, a workbook in the making, and pre-selected materials from three years of carnival themes of CC. Participants were guided through a series of making activities which were documented, and subsequently analysed and edited into to produce a final collective workbook that was distributed as zine. 

In Hasselt, a collective exhibition and live program at the Begijnhof Living Lab was organised around a 7-meter-long, narrow table placed at floor level, which acted as the central site for gathering. Activities unfolded throughout the day, often around lunch, allowing the exhibition to remain active and changing over time. The Place itself grew through use: materials were added, rearranged and left in place, making ongoing processes visible.

Organisers: Rosa Grasso, Linda Valtancoli, Arianna Michelini, Lucia Fabbri, Daniel Dotti Francioni, Agrourbana APS Modigliana (Italy)

Sentiero del Cantico, Modigliana (Italy), March 28-29th.

This is a participatory walkshop exploring collective mapping and storytelling as situated practices of care in the aftermath of environmental disruption. Following the 2023 flood in Emilia-Romagna region that altered the relationship between community and territory, the project addresses tensions between institutional risk management and lived ecological knowledge, as well as between recognised heritage and overlooked micro-histories. Building on long-term place-based engagement, the Atlas redefines mapping as a relational and performative process. 

Participants collectively walk the Cantico Trail while producing situated interpretations of place through writing and drawing. Mapping shifts from a descriptive act to an embodied and co-authored practice negotiating memory, visibility, and belonging across human and non-human agents. Rather than producing a comprehensive representation, the atlas assembles plural narratives open to revision over time, supporting care and re-imagination of fragile commons.

Organisers: Heather Renée Barker, Aleyna Akkan, Louis Santos, Yunching Chang, Chanwoo Kim, Jessica Ivana, Immersive Design Research Lab, California State University Long Beach (USA).

Design Happening, “… And Its Double” @Mosaic [130m2] Urban Lab, Downtown Long Beach (USA), April 9-12th.

Design Happenings are situated, participatory, world-building places where constituents co-create experiences of wonder. “…And Its Double” is an experiential investigation into wonder as a physio-cognitive state; one that facilitates deeper embodied participation, social connection, and co-created meaning. 

Drawing from Antonin Artaud’s demand for visceral sensory experiences in theatre and modelled on Allan Kaprow’s Art Happenings, “… And Its Double” engaged a broad cross-section of the public. 

Constituents are invited to “come unprepared”, and engage with sensory “features” emphasizing reflection, movement, and scale. People slowed, would dwell, and engage with strangers; some became visibly emotional. The place is composed of ten features designed through an Imagist methodology. Gossamer Mirrors, six 13-foot bands of Mylar suspended from a 22-foot ceiling, refracting light and multiplying reflections. Cocoon Forest, a cluster of ten vertically suspended, black hammocks where the line between the impromptu and choreographed blurred as dancers emerged from black sheer layers as vivid neon while members of the public were hiding and swinging in the cocoons. With Silhouette, as a large-scale projection, constituents played with shadow and relation of their bodies against the light. Sound was also both created and curated as an instrument of the mise en scène. Such “features” elicited responses that defy typical behavioural description; the IDRL is now investigating this unexpected emotional intensity through design ethnography and early neuro-architectural sensing tools.

Organisers: Teresa Palmieri, Sónia Matos Faculty of Design and Art, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy)

Basis Vinschgau-Venosta, Silandro (Italy), in partnership with Bianca Elzenbaumer (La Foresta Accademia di Comunità), March 26th.

The Place was a one-day event exploring how to support existing commoning practices that foster more inclusive, ecologically and economically sustainable futures in rural, mountain areas of Trentino-South Tyrol. In response to ongoing challenges such as depopulation and the decline of services and cultural activities, the initiative builds on local efforts like BASIS Vinschgau-Venosta – a social activation hub situated in a reclaimed military barrack in the Alps.

The event started with a presentation by Bianca Elzenbaumer narrating the experience of setting up the community academy 

“La Foresta”– a collectively regenerated space and emerging commons that welcomes and promotes participatory activities in various fields. PD concepts (e.g., infrastructuring, commoning, eco-social futures) were weaved into the presentation and contextualised within the practices of “La Foresta”. This engaged participants to reflect on commoning practices and how PD could support their realisation in rural areas. As a first step to co-imagining rural commons, participants developed posters which shared their visions. Hence starting from these visions, they engaged in a backcasting activity in which they imagined the steps to take towards the imagined futures supported by a simple template and a card deck sharing participatory design concepts in an accessible way. As a last step we shared and reflected on the emerged visions and plans.

Organisers: Firaz Peer, Daniela DiGiacomo, Fatima Espinoza Vasquez, Shannon Crawford Barniskis, University of Kentucky (USA)

School of Information Science, University of Kentucky (USA), May 6th.

As members of the Community-based, Applied, and Participatory Research (CAPR) Group at the University of Kentucky, we seek to strengthen collaboration between the university and local communities through co-created research, shared learning, and social change. The Place creates a locally grounded yet globally connected forum where community partners, faculty, and students can reflect on their experiences, share stories of resilience and challenge, and collectively imagine more equitable futures for collaboration. Through storytelling, dialogue, and zine-making activities, participants explored how meaningful forms of participation already exist within communities, even when they are not formally recognized as participatory design. This encourages more inclusive and flexible understandings of participation that value informal, relational, and community-driven practices of collaboration and care. The insights and artifacts generated contribute to ongoing conversations within participatory design around justice, sustainability, care, and the cultivation of long-term, mutually supportive partnerships.

Organisers: Philip Ely, Ilpo Koskinen, Ganna Borzenkova, Paul Bason, Sally Morfill, Erika Conchis, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK); Brian Dixon, Katrina Newell, Belfast School of Art (No Ireland); Olena Muradyan, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine); Andrea Botero, Nastasia Fomina, Aalto University (Finland); Rūta Valušytė, Dovilė Gaižauskienė, Kaunas Technology University (Lithuania); Manuela Celi, Politecnico di Milano (Italy).

Distributed workshops in Manchester, Belfast, Kharkiv, Espoo, and Kaunas, with two international keynotes from New York and Venice Beach, March 5th and April 9th.

We examined fiction as a design method for the creation of service and civil society concepts, with the aim of creating the conditions for empathy and dialogue in the context of conflict and peace. Our aim was to harness the collective imagination of participants from five countries to ‘imagine otherwise’ in a world replete with violent conflict, political polarisation, and anxiety. 

They began with a briefing from Cynthia E. Smith, curator of Socially Responsible Design at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York; Julian Bleecker PhD, the founder of the Near Future Laboratory, California and the author of the seminal book The Manual of Design Fiction; and Dr Philip Ely, Reader in Design at Manchester School of Art. Manchester is widely regarded as the origin of the Industrial Revolution, the home of the suffragette and labour rights movements, and the second oldest Design School in the UK (established in 1838), making it the launchpad of ‘new origins’ and new ideas. Design schools in Belfast, Espoo, Kaunas and the sociology dept. in Kharkiv joined researchers and students from Manchester to respond to Julian’s call to “imagine harder” in support of peace and understanding.

Organisers: Marco Mazzarotto UTFPR Frederick van Amstel UTFPR Bibiana Oliveira Serpa UFRJ Pamela Marques ESDI/UERJ Rodrigo Freese Gonzatto PUCPR, Design & Oppression Network (Brazil).

Design & Oppression Discord Server, May 11th and 14th.

Ahora todos quieren ser latinos pero les falta el sazón: projetos e trajetos latinoamericanos nas práticas participativas – Now everyone wants to be Latin, but the spice is missing: Latin American projects and approaches in participatory practices. 

Playing Bad Bunny’s hit in the background, this two-day online Place brought together ~40 participants from Brazil and Latin America to ask: What does Latin American participatory design mean? Grounded in Paulo Freire’s culture circle method and inspired by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, the event tested how participatory methodologies translate to remote, multilingual settings. Participation unfolded through multiple registers such as text, emoji, image, GIF, voice, music, and silence, revealing that platform design (Discord) can enable or obstruct dialogue in colonial ways. Day one discussion focused on a D&O network text, prompting reflections on how participation is practiced, or denied despite good intentions. 

Participants extracted a generative theme – contradictions of participating in a neoliberalized world – and produced visual codifications (e.g., drawings, photographs, graphics). Day two focused on collective decoding through text and voice. Inspired by Augusto Boal’s group dynamics games, a rhythm machine transitioned from oppressive mechanical repetition to liberating improvisation, yet liberation felt fragile and intentional, unlike oppression which passed unnoticed. By the end, everyone shared a public announcement of what they wanted to engage with and how they were feeling about the event, turning denunciation into hope, from where their feet stood.

We conclude that Latin American participatory design, from where our feet stand, is not a toolkit but a commitment to hope and liberation.

Organisers: Virginia Tassinari, Değer Özkaramanli, Fernando Del Caro Secomandi, Sara Colombo, Abhigyan Singh, Department of Human-Centered Design, Delft University of Technology (Netherlands).

Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), June 2nd.

This symposium explores ethics, values, and culture in design research and education across IDE’s three departments: Human-Centered Design, Strategic Product Design, and Design for Interaction & Social Innovation. The conversation addressed: Design Anthropology for Social Change; Design under Pressure: Exploring the Tensions in Design Ethics; Designing for Mutual Recognition and Human Freedom; and Designing Feminist AI: Towards Inclusivity and Empowerment. 

Through an ephemeral library of books and papers, student-developed provotypes, and collective zine-making, the participants explored ethical issues across design research and education at TU Delft. The material mapping of an ephemeral participatory library, in interplay with provotypes developed in the Delft Lectures on Design MA course – by entering dialogue with the theoretical framework – rendered tangible and embodied emerging ethical issues, tensions, dilemmas, and potentials, enabling a more positional, embodied, and open conversation. Materializing the exchange created connections between references, revealing unexpected thematic threads, shared concerns, and possibilities for collaboration across departments. During the conversation, Francesca Mauri (Feminist Generative AI lab) captured these common threads in the zine, reflecting the situated and ephemeral nature of this gathering: less an institutional event than an undercommon (Moten & Harney, 2013) space of reflection, where researchers, students, and educators could collectively interrogate their theoretical frameworks, and discover unexpected common threads and futures for designing at IDE.

Organisers: Hadas Zohar, Amalia de Götzen, Patricia Csobánczi, Maria Vitaller del Olmo, Christina Kinnear Lindeberg, Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University (Denmark).

Aalborg University, Copenhagen (Denmark), March 13th.

Participatory Design is deeply institutionalised in Denmark, yet its consensus-driven culture risks privileging harmony over contestation and reproducing exclusion by engaging the “usual suspects”. PDC Places Copenhagen was hosted in the socially polarised district of Sydhavn to bridge our university’s extended participatory network with local actors. While a cascading invitation strategy ensured high attendance and trust among like‑minded participants, it also exposed a gap between intention and practice: the ease of mobilising existing networks overshadowed the slower work of building new local relationships. 

The event led to reflections on how infrastructural advantage shapes participation, as universities more readily collaborate with established organisations possessing stable spaces and staff, potentially marginalising smaller or less formal actors. Through panels, hands-on workshops, discussions and shared meals, we experimented with multiple forms of knowledge. Participants’ reflections underscored critical factors for inclusive participation: concrete framing, physical proximity, presence, and productive incompleteness. We argue that events can catalyse connection, but sustained, context-sensitive partnerships are essential for expanding participation beyond dominant groups.

Organisers: Camila Andrade dos Santos, Instituto Federal de Educação Ciência e Tecnologia do Maranhão (Brazil), Ana Melo, Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal)

Federal Institute of Science and Technology Education of Maranhão and Faculty of Architecture of University of Lisbon, May – June.

The Place proposed a transatlantic program that reflects on participatory design as a driver of community-centered practices and social innovation. Building on previous collaborations between Portugal and Brazil, the programme integrates moments of theoretical study, exchange of knowledge, hybrid workshops, and community co-creation labs, strengthening the dialogue between local participatory design practices and citizen engagement. 

The PDC Place MA&LX presents participatory design as a socio-material and relational process that enables communities to co-produce knowledge, develop capacities for action, and cultivate autonomy. PDC Place Maranhão–Lisbon 2026 positions itself as a transatlantic laboratory for experimentation and collective learning. Its activities create spaces for encounters between contexts, knowledge, and cultures, where participatory design acts as a driver for community-centered approaches. By articulating theory, practice, and critical reflection, the programme aims to strengthen collaborative networks and imagine more inclusive and sustainable futures through joint action.

Organisers: Ana Margarida Ferreira, Natacha Ribeiro Pinto, Hernâni Alves, Inês Camaño-Garcia, Tabata Paola Parra, Estrela Nunes, Inês Pereira Lopes, University of Beira Interior Covilhã (Portugal).

MUSLAN – Wool Museum of the University of Beira Interior (University Museum), Covilhã (Portugal), March 18th.

It explores alternatives to conventional industry-oriented design approaches, involving participatory design practices in rural areas. Rather than positioning design solely as a discipline focused on problem-solving or technological development, this initiative approaches design as a relational practice capable of mediating among different forms of knowledge, actors, and territorial realities. While the original framing centred on rural and mountain territories, emergent discussions expanded toward critical concerns of power asymmetries, vulnerability, situated knowledge, and collective agency. 

Through presentations, roundtable exchanges, and open debate, participants engaged with heterogeneous research contexts, including healthcare, intergenerational memory, regenerative design, speculative participation, and community-led innovation. Despite their disciplinary diversity, the contributions shared a commitment to destabilising hierarchical knowledge production and advancing inclusive participatory frameworks. 

The Place unfolded as a hybrid session where doctoral researchers discussed – with researchers, community members, international DESIS Network representatives, and members of Design from the Margins DESIS Cluster – around their ongoing PD projects, spanning rural territories, healthcare, social innovation, intergenerational memory, regenerative design, and speculative participation.