Backcasting is a method that starts with a desired future outcome and works backwards to determine the steps needed to achieve it. It helps bridge the gap between the present and the desired future, enabling individuals and organizations to develop strategies for achieving their goals.
Citizen science is the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research to increase scientific knowledge.
Individuals access cultural goods and experiences in a myriad of ways. This cultural participation is linked to several areas of social and economic impact: social inclusion, education, innovation, well-being and health, and civic engagement. It can also be instrumental in tackling societal challenges from new angles, favouring resilience, skills creation, and prosocial behavioural changes. This chapter outlines why cultural participation is important for local development and should be viewed as a tool for policymakers in many fields, beyond cultural policy.
This handbook is a resource for organizations interested in measuring cultural participation, as well as a tool for raising awareness among policymakers. To this end, Measuring Cultural Participation combines theoretical and practical aspects of methodology. This is a challenging undertaking –even more so considering the wide range of data available, research undertaken and the complexity involved in defining ‘cultural participation’ for national statistical systems and policies across the world.
Have you read a good book lately, seen a film at your local cinema, or visited a new exhibit at a museum? Have you sung with a choir, taken a painting class or started writing a novel? Have you uploaded a video to the internet or created a website? If so, you have been participating in culture. The assumption, then, is that through cultural participation you have been able to express yourself creatively, have been exposed to alternative perspectives, and may have even had opportunities to engage with people with different backgrounds, beliefs or values. In doing so, it might be expected that you would have (or gain) greater tolerance for differences and more respect for and trust in others and that you would acquire the capacity to engage more actively in democratic life.
The Assessment framework for E-participation (AFeP) is aimed to support a result-oriented implementation of e-participation for democratic governance in digital society. The framework can be used as a theoretical platform for the elaboration of success criteria and success factors , for comparative assessment of e-participation initiatives, as well as for the designing and monitoring of e-participation projects. It could also serve as a tool for knowledge sharing and capacity building to enhance the effectiveness and impact of e-participation initiatives.
The Youth Participation Strategy aims at enhancing youth participation in democratic life through the Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps programmes. Young people are increasingly now involved in ‘alternative forms’ of participation, including youth activism, community volunteering, online activism or youth social movements such as the climate activism movement.
Governments increasingly turn to the Internet to aid in transparency, accountability, and public participation activities, and there is growing interest in innovative online problem-solving models to serve the public good. One such model, the crowdsourcing model, leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes. Understanding how and why people participate in these kinds of activities is important for developing better new media tools for the public good going forward.
