Participation as political practice

On the rationalities of participation at cultural institutions

Abstract

Participation and civic engagement are highly actual themes in cultural institutions and among cultural educators. The themes are related to numbers of visitors, audience development and the relevance of the institution. However, it is still difficult to answer the core question of for whom, how and why. This article addresses these questions and is accordingly divided into three sections. First, I present two projects from Museum of Copenhagen which were based on participation and which represent the “for whom”. Second, I advocate a practiceoriented approach and a community-perspective on participation in order to provide a set of concrete tools to initiate participatory projects and answer the “how”. Finally, I set up both a societal and a citizenship-oriented rationality of participation in order to address the “why” from these two perspectives.