We
The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
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SYMPOSIUM: Community Now? The Politics of Participatory Design
The symposium focuses on of bottom-up movements in an international context, especially in relation to current social developments in Germany and Israel.
Recently, questions concerning collaboration, alternative forms of political action, self-organization and participation – at local and global levels – have garnered much attention and are relevant for the academic environment, politics, the media, and for the general public. During the symposium we will explore how to foster processes of active participation and support sustainable community development, as well as the impact of these processes on policy making and our everyday life.
The program includes an opening evening with panel discussions and night-talks, followed by two days of keynote talks, presentations and workshops – accompanied by an exhibition around the Neighborhood Lab and a series of thematic walks.