Enhancing cultural and societal engagement through participatory methods: cross-disciplinary learning perspectives

This chapter presents a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborative case within the framework of digital culture and participatory research. Our work emerges from an experimental collaboration including researchers from three European universities interested in the design of innovative methodologies involving young people from different cultural backgrounds. The researchers’ goal was to engage in increasing cultural awareness and strengthening democratic/citizen engagement through digital media. We hoped that the use of digital tools was suitable for involving the groups of minorities and underrepresented communities and tested this in Saint-Denis, France, and Mytilene, Greece. We organised open-science workshops and activities that facilitated the exchanges among the participants. While members of the team included faculty staff with experience in teaching and learning, this collaborative learning case gave the opportunity to reflect on how design-researchers’ aspiration to increase cultural awareness and citizen engagement in minority communities meet challenges. The learning takeaways are especially oriented towards how tools can be developed and oriented towards the support of engagement strategies. The chapter discusses the potentials and pitfalls relating to cross-disciplinary collaboration and to the involvement of underrepresented groups to increase cultural awareness and citizen engagement through digital tools and participatory activities