Design Democracy Camp

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.

Protest & Intervention
How do we make attitude visible and give shape to dissent? Participants explored how protest can be designed, from visual language to spatial intervention, translating civic stance into form.

Signs & Community
What strengthens belonging, diversity and togetherness? This strand examined how symbols, identities and shared visual systems can hold a community together and make diversity visible.

City & Participation
How do we design spaces that enable participation? Working with questions of vacancy and the shared use of urban space, participants reimagined the city as a common resource that can be appropriated and shaped in the spirit of democratic participation.

The Design Democracy Camp was conceived as a Research through Design prototype for a planned IU Incubator research project, developing 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

Initiator and Project Lead: Prof. Annelie Franke, IU Internationale Hochschule, Mainz

Project Leadership: Prof. Tanja Godlewsky, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bettina-Maria Müller, Prof. Holger Ziemann

Professors and 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

Partner Institutions

World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026: https://wdc2026.org/de
Design FRM gGmbH, Referat kulturelle Bildung Hessen, KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain

Project Website: https://design-democracy-camp.de/