TRADERS (Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation For Public Space) (2014-2017)

Art and design (A&D) researchers can contribute in interesting ways to engaging citizens, policy makers, private partners and other participants to participate in public space (issues). The methods of doing so were, however, underexplored. Therefore, the FP7, Marie Curie Multi-ITN project ‘TRADERS’ (short for ‘Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation for Public Space’) researched the ways in which art and design researchers can ‘trade’ or exchange with multiple participants and disciplines in public space projects and – at the same time – trained them in doing so.

Five early stage art and design researchers and one sociological researcher tested and developed methods on which art and design researchers could rely when working on public space projects in participatory way, through initial thematic frameworks: intervention, play, multiple performative mapping, data-mining and modelling in dialogue. The researchers also investigated how these methods related to each other, to a possible ‘meta-framework’, and to the larger epistemic project structure. This ensemble of relations and specific combinations traced possible ways that future artists and designers (or researchers and practitioners in other disciplines) can work in participatory and public space contexts.

TRADERS brought together a wide range of art and design disciplines such as visual arts, design, architecture, urbanism and music, drawing a strength from their common combination that facilitated engagement and collaboration with other (non-A&D) disciplines and sectors.

TRADERS ESRs:
Naomi Bueno de Mesquita
Pablo Calderón Salazar
Jon Geib
Saba Golchehr
Michael Kaethler
Annelies Vaneycken

• TRADERS [main website]
• TRADERS TALK [open case archive for projects of participatory art and design (practice and research) in/for public space]

• TRADERS Conference [MEDIATIONS: Art & Design Agency and Participation in Public Space]
• TRADERS Open School [The city could be otherwise]
• TRADERS-hosted journal issue [CoDesign: Co-Design and the public realm]
• TRADERS Book [Trading Places: Practices of Public Participation in Art and Design Research]

• TRADERS Training Week #1 [intervention as a participatory practice]
• TRADERS Training Week #2 [PLAY / and participative methods for working with children and
young adults on art and design projects in public space]
• TRADERS Training Week #3 [multiple performative mapping]
• TRADERS Training Week #4 [data mining / Big Data in the City: Exploring Notions of Design and Agency]
• TRADERS Training Week #5 [modelling in dialogue]

• TRADERS Summer School [On Participatory Art & Design and the Public Space]
• TRADERS Autumn School [On the role of participatory art and design in the reconfiguration of work (in Genk)]

TRADERS (Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation For Public Space). (2014-2017). EU FP7, Marie Curie Multi-ITN project. Partner institutions: Design Academy Eindhoven (Netherlands), Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg), Royal College of Art (London), KU Leuven (Belgium), HDK Academy of Design and Crafts (Gothenburg), and LUCA School of Arts (Belgium). Collaborator partner (for Gothenburg): the City of Gothenburg Cultural Department.