Over three days, the Frankfurt campus of IU Internationale Hochschule became a space for democratic design. As part of the official program of World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026, the Design Democracy Camp brought together around 150 participants, citizens, students, pupils, activists and experts, to explore a shared question: how can participatory and co-creative design methods strengthen democratic participation and a sense of political self-efficacy?
The camp was built on a conviction that runs through all of my work: design is not made for people, but with them. Democratic principles remain abstract as long as they exist only as text. Once they become a design task, they become negotiable, testable and open to being shaped.
What made this project distinctive was its transdisciplinary approach. Professors from Media Design, Architecture and Social Work did not work alongside each other, but genuinely together, in dialogue with citizens and local organizations from Frankfurt. Participants went out into the city's neighborhoods, developed ideas collectively, sometimes failed, and built new approaches to products and interventions that make democratization tangible in everyday life.
Across three thematic worlds, Protest & Intervention, Signs & Community, and City & Participation, participants worked in transdisciplinary sprints and labs. They discussed, built, visualized and above all thought together. No prior experience was required. Everyone could take part and contribute their own perspective.
Gruppenbild letzter Tag
Teilnehmende des Workshops "Democracy Remix"
Teilnehmende vor ihren Arbeiten des Workshops "Zeichen für den Frieden"
Prof. Bettina Maria-Müller bei der Präsentation des Dialog Kiosk "leerstand für alle"
Teilnehmende der Workshops bei der Endpräsentation des Dialog Kiosk "Leerstand für alle"
Werkschau
Werkschau
Werkschau
Teilnehmende des Workshops "Memes for Democracy" und Prof. Silke herwig & Prof. Daniela Reuß
Prof. Silke Herwig im Workshop "Memes for Democrcay"
Prof. Tanj Godlewsky
Teil des Professor:innen Teams Mediendesign & Architektur
Endpräsentation des Workshops "Stimme zeigen" von Prof. Claudia Kernberger (links)
OUR WORKSHOP
Lab 1: "Wir kommen um zu stören!"
Thematic world: Protest & Intervention
Thematic world: Protest & Intervention
Prof. Annelie Franke & Prof. Tanja Godlewsky
Who does the city belong to? Who is seen, and who is overlooked? Not everyone experiences the city in the same way. Barriers, exclusions and invisibilities shape urban space, often unnoticed by those they do not affect. Together with Prof. Tanja Godlewsky, I led a lab that set out to make these exclusions visible through gentle forms of protest and deliberate irritations that invite reflection rather than destruction.
Over three days we designed temporary interventions for urban space. We began with exercises in perception and perspective, walking through the city in different roles to make exclusions tangible. From there, participants developed concrete forms of protest in co-creative processes, projections, installations, performative actions and visual signs, and realized them in public space. What began as ideas became interventions that could be tested, experienced and documented.
Participants left with a first-hand sense of what it means to design with people rather than for them, how simple means can raise awareness, and how creative intervention can strengthen democratic participation.
Link to miro Board:
Vorbereitungen für die Intervention
Vorbereitungen für die Intervention
Vorbereitungen für die Intervention
Sichtbarmachen & Aufmerksamkeit erzeugen
Los gehts in die Stadt
Typografische Intervention am Frankfurter Südbahnhof
Teilnehmende des Workshops bei der Intervention am Frankfurter Südbahnhof
Teilnehmende des Workshops bei der Intervention am Frankfurter Südbahnhof
Teilnehmende des Workshops bei der Intervention am Frankfurter Südbahnhof
Das eigens von uns gestaltete Kartenset "wem gehört die Stadt?" zur Sensibilisierung
Wunschliste für Frankfurt
Prof. Annelie Franke und Prof. Tanja Godlewsky in ihrem Workshop "Wir kommen um zu stören"
THE WIDER CAMP
Alongside my own workshop, the camp offered a range of formats led by colleagues from all three disciplines, from making protest visible and designing symbols of community to reimagining urban space as a shared resource. Together these workshops formed a single, connected experience in which design became a democratic practice.
The Design Democracy Camp was the first edition of a format we intend to develop further, refining transferable methods for democratic transformation that can be adapted to other contexts.
Special thanks to the entire team of professors and staff from Media Design, Architecture and Social Work who carried this project together, and to the many partners and IU teams whose support made it possible. This was as much an internal collaboration as an external one: campus management, sales, marketing, research and the virtual campus all contributed to making a new and demanding format a reality.
PROJECT TEAM
Project Lead
Prof. Annelie Franke
Project Leadership
Prof. Tanja Godlewsky, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bettina-Maria Müller, Prof. Holger Ziemann
Team
Prof. Dr. Emre Arslan, Prof. Dr. Burak Çopur, Prof. Silke Herwig, Prof. Claudia Kernberger, Prof. Nicole Kruse, Prof. Hans Nungeßer, Prof. Dr. Claudia Olivier-Mensah, Prof. Bettina Otto, Prof. Daniela Reuß, Prof. Dr. Katrin Sen, Yannick von Lautz, Prof. Florian Althans, together with students, citizens and organizations from Frankfurt RheinMain Region.
Partner Institutions
World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026: https://wdc2026.org/de
Referat kulturelle Bildung Hessen, KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain
Referat kulturelle Bildung Hessen, KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain
Project Website: https://design-democracy-camp.de/