Designing Immersive Participatory Practices for Enacting Eco-Social Transformations

Ann Light is an interaction theorist and professor of design working at the University of Sussex, UK, and Malmo University, Sweden. Trained in drama, interaction design, computer science and AI, her current research explores art-based immersive participatory processes, looking at how they can inspire sustainable futures through cultural change.Harry Lewis is an assistant professor in social and environmental psychology at the London School of Economics. Before committing to academia, he spent several years teaching maths and English in a vocational college. He also runs thirtythree circular, a small independent record label, and lives in Brighton with his partner, Esme and their cat, Flea.

‘…incredibly useful for practitioners and researchers in the field of designing experiences that engage people with Earth Crisis histories, impacts and possible futures, this provides validation and quality principles for experimentation with modes of artist-led, affective, conversational and “face-to-place” methods of imagination activism’.Bridget McKenzie, Co-founder of Culture Declares Emergency‘Eloquently reclaiming key concepts (immersion, participation, transformation) as guiding lights for designing such journeys, the makers of this manuscript break away from conventional, prescriptive and exploitative approaches to eco-social change and offer interdisciplinary accounts that illustrate existing practices and inspire emerging ones. A must-read book’.Eleftheria Lekakis, Author, Consumer Activism (2022)‘The environmental movement learned a bitter lesson over decades: we won’t stop the destruction of living systems just because we are told to do so. What does change behaviour are lived experiences of connection – with nature and with each other. Such experiences are not easy to find, or access, but this is where the arts come in – and this essential book. A treasure trove of immersive, participatory and embodied experiences, it’s the gateway we all so badly need.’John Thackara, Philosopher, Curator (Doors of Perception, etc.) and Author, How to Thrive in the Next Economy and more

• 1. Introduction: Collective Enactments, Affective Prefigurations and Immersive Speculations 2. Learning by Imagining: Teacher-in-Role to Edu-Larps 3. From Opposition to Transformation: Building Resilience with Pretensive Methodologies 4. Rehearsing Relations: Imagining Alternative Futures as Artistic Practice 5. Between Knowing and Acting: A Dialectic Exchange with Superflux’ Anab Jain and Jon Ardern 6. Unlocking the Resonant Power of Video Games to Mobilize Cultural Change 7. Being Mrs Rochester: Empathy in Live Action Role-Playing 8. Design Encounters: Inviting Speculation in the Here-and-Now 9. The Strategy Room: Using Interactive Performance to Create Democratic Design 10. Boomtown: World Building as Experiential Design 11. Collective and Urgent: Sociodrama as a Holding Space for Climate Activism 12. Crafty Practices of Masking: Stories from Beyond Duality 13. Building Readiness with Time Travel: Relevance and Scale in Adapting a “Here-and-Then” Futures Workshop 14. Evaluation as Participatory Design Practice: Extending and Capturing Impact 15. A Coda on Flourishing Futures: Into the Trees