Social media are not living up to their promise of offering arenas for civic deliberation among people with diverse opinions. In the wake of this development, activists, educators, and scholars alike have begun to turn to new forms of civic engagement. Examples include alternative online, interventions in public space, mini-publics, pervasive art projects, live action role-playing events, and many more. Larpocracy focusses on one such platform that has gained increased attention over the past ten years: live action role-playing (larp). Our goal is to study larps, enchance their capacity of supporting democratic engagement and political expression, and learn from them to inspire the design of digital and other spaces for dialogue.
We’ve submitted the project twice for funding, and both times we’ve had to navigate various risks related to democratic challenges. In our risk analysis, we have the risk that “It becomes no longer legal to run, or participate in, Larpocracy activities” with the mitigation strategy to move these to a place where they are still legal. It is interesting to keep track of where these risks emerge: when we submitted the project first time, we could not run activities in Brazil and barely in Poland. And while we now have plans for both countries, our project would most likely have been defunded if it had U.S. financing.
Still, it is not a particularly controversial project. We aren’t going to brainwash the young to create a larp revolution. And while larp can be excellent tools for activism we aren’t particularly invested in that. We are focusing on a very basic foundation for democracy: the right and ability to carry out a respectful dialogue. To find playful ways to train people in such fundamental democratic skills as to articulate themselves and to listen to others arguments and emotions. But I think that this particular condition of democracy – the skill and willingness to both argue and listen to other arguments, and the creation of spaces where this is both safe and possible – may be one of the most challenged today.