Designing for and with ambiguity

In the last thirty years, there has been an increased interest in supporting children's participation in society, where the results of these practices may or may not have contributed to more democratic outcomes. In this thesis, I focus on the democratic character and potential of the 'processes' driving such practices, and their outcomes, which, to date, have mostly been overlooked. My inquiry is situated within the context of participatory design with children and explores how adult-initiated practices that work on children's participation in society, can, in addition to producing a democratic outcome only, also be actualised as a democratic process. Here, a 'democratic process' is understood as a process based on child-adult interactions that respect fundamental democratic values such as freedom, equality, and justice. My design practice, in this case, the 'Public Play' project, formed the core of my fieldwork and empirical material. 'Public Play' was a series of five participatory design workshops where groups of children and I worked together on children's participation in public space in Belgium and Sweden