Designing Immersive Participatory Practices for Enacting Eco-Social Transformations: Playful Encounters, Recovering Futures - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 104111480X ISBN 13: 9781041114802

Publisher: Routledge, 2026

Synopsis

Presenting accounts from artists and designers, this book explores how we can transform our societies to greet uncertain futures with greater readiness and care through immersive, creative experiences.

Crossing performance, theatre, games, sociodrama, participatory design, socially-engaged art, live action role-play, eco-social commitments and more-than-human philosophies, this edited volume examines common processes by which transformations in culture may be kick-started or confirmed, revealing disciplinary differences, but united by an interest in the meeting of prefigurative politics, participatory method, immersive structure and care-based ethos. Readers will take away insights into conducting work that makes a documented difference, at a tier between the individual and society and looking past current failures of imagination to worlds beyond the (post)industrial ruins. Fourteen chapters, including one dedicated to participatory evaluation, describe practices of change-making from across Europe and beyond, offering inspiration and technique in tackling interrelated ecological, cultural and existential challenges at a time when trends doubling down on extraction and consumerism are clearly doomed.

Sharing an opportunity to investigate an engaging approach to social transformation from all sides, this book will be of relevance to artists, designers, students of performance, transformation and sustainability professionals and anyone interested in how we move societies from current impasses to collective action and caring, collaborative worlds.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives (CC BY-ND) 4.0 license.

About this title

About the Author

Ann Light is an interaction theorist and professor of design working at the University of Sussex, UK, and Malmo University, Sweden. Trained in drama, interaction design, computer science and AI, her current research explores art-based immersive participatory processes, looking at how they can inspire sustainable futures through cultural change.

Harry Lewis is an assistant professor in social and environmental psychology at the London School of Economics. Before committing to academia, he spent several years teaching maths and English in a vocational college. He also runs thirtythree circular, a small independent record label, and lives in Brighton with his partner, Esme and their cat, Flea.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 104111480X
• ISBN 13: 9781041114802
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 294
• Editor: Light Ann, Lewis Harry