Sonia Bussu about using arts to bring emotions in democratic settings

Welcome on another episode of Democracy Innovator Podcast and our guest of today is Sonja Busu.

Thank you for your time, Sonja.

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm really looking forward to this conversation with you.

And you are a professor at the University of Birmingham.

And you're a professor in public.

OK.

I should say.

in public policy.

And so as a first question, I would like to ask you, m what are you researching?

um

I'm interested in participatory democracy uh and I study democratic innovations.

um So those spaces of participation that allow citizens to have a say on the policies that affect them.

And I also use participatory research in my work, in my empirical work.

And so I try

to work with participants to co-create policies but also to evaluate the process and the experience of participation with them.

And recently in my new project called INSPIRE, which is funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe, we are also testing arts-based and creative methods to strengthen

inclusion within these participatory spaces that um often tend to attract the most resourceful citizens, let's say, and the groups whose voice and whose experiences are

often at the margins of political

public and social life often navigate many barriers even to access these new spaces of participation and so we are trying to rethink participation from their perspective,

co-designing these spaces with them and using a number of different creative methods that can perhaps help address some barriers along um

education, culture, language, and so using arts to uh also embody and experiences and bring emotions into democratic spaces.

So that's what I'm working on at the moment specifically, but generally for the past 15 years I've been really focusing on participatory democracy spaces.

various kind and I'm also very interested in social movements and how social movements use these spaces to advocate for a deeper social change.

I think that gives you a bit of overview of what I'm doing right now.

Absolutely.

Do you have an example about the co-creation of policies or also the co-design?

Yeah, so I've just concluded a participatory process under the OusInspire project in the West Midlands, so working with young people in Birmingham.

And we focused on youth employment policies.

and we used something called legislative theatre and this comes from the tradition of the theatre of the oppressed.

So we recruited these 15 young people, very young, between 14 and 17 years old.

from um diverse communities and from across the West Midlands.

So we used our local networks of youth groups and something called the Young Combined Authority, which is an advisory body of young people to the West Midlands Combined

Authority.

So we recruited these 50 young people and with the help of um legislative theatre facilitators, these young people created a

uh through improvisations and games that reflects their experience of trying to access equitable work experience, work placements and getting the support they need to develop

their careers and enter the labour market.

um so we, with Legislative Future, you really focus a lot on power, right?

And intersectional exclusions.

And lot of these young people

come from very diverse communities and um

they might experience intersectional exclusions along race, gender, class.

And so um the play, which is very much based on improvisation, reflect their experience.

And then for the event, we invite an audience of community members and a team of policy makers, a team of people that have, in this case, influence on uh

youth employment policies and that can help address some of the problems that the play identifies.

And the play, by the way, although it's about very serious issues, also very funny, it really mocks the system.

and the title is Your Fried, which is a play on word on your fired and refers to the fact that the protagonist ends up working for a fast food, right?

And experiencing really uh poor working conditions and low pay.

And uh so what happens after the presentation, the performance of the play,

the GST filter facilitators and I worked with two fantastic young people that had been involved with me in another project and then trained to become facilitators themselves.

then, so what do they do?

They invite the audience to identify problems and then step onto the stage in the scene.

to try and change the scenario, right?

And so members of the audience, but also the policymakers in the room.

effectively are entering the lives of these young people, right, and trying to change the scene to address the problem.

And then there is a dialogue, right, between the audience, the policymakers, the young people in trying to fine tune these changes.

And this sort of opens the way to a dialogue that ends up with an actual policy proposal, actually various policy proposals.

And then the policymakers in the room have to think, okay, how can I translate these proposals into tangible change?

And they have to make some commitments in front of everyone.

And then there is a follow-up, right, where we bring together the young people and the policymakers.

We look at what has been agreed on the night and then uh a program of actions, right, is agreed.

and then we follow up with them.

Now obviously policy making is very complex and things don't always happen in a linear way but it's like this becomes like the play, right, which is uh very visual, brings in

emotion and then sort of generate these feelings of empathy, right, and solidarity in a more immediate way than just by reading a report or some numbers or just the exchange of

rational arguments, right, that can be very escrow.

here through play, game, improvisation, theatre, you're also challenging power dynamics between the young people and the policymakers and it's the young people and their

experience that frames the whole debate and the whole deliberation so that's the starting point, right?

And then this becomes a catalyser of ongoing dialogue ideally.

So what we're trying to do is not to think about these projects as one event, but really anchor it in the local civil society and link it to live policy agendas so that you can...

And this has happened.

So now we're finding synergies at different level, the municipal level, at the regional level to enact some of these proposals and groups of young people from the Young Combined

Authority

I've just mentioned are also taking ownership of what happens next, that the young people that have been involved in the project are also involved in the actions that have been

agreed.

So yeah, this is all uh generating new ways of working and it all started with a play.

And so, yes, and you need to inspire other participatory processes by using things like pictures or performance lectures and games and play as a way of bringing in um

different groups to look at specific policy issues.

I can imagine, but maybe I'm wrong, don't know, that in an event like the one that you described there could be maybe less polarization because sometimes, often, there is, I

don't know, one is left, the other one is right and so they do not talk to each other.

Well, maybe in such an event it's different.

think it's way of imaging, like now we talk a lot about immigration, right?

And there is a lot of polarization about immigration.

It would be really like um bringing on stage the experience uh of an immigrant um trying to um integrate in a new country.

And that experience frames the deliberation.

community members, irrespective of their background, they are too, in a way...

relate to these different experiences like seeing the world from different perspectives, right?

But in a more visual way, it's really about uh bringing in emotion and feelings and finding connections also um through actual feelings of solidarity and empathy, right?

That are perhaps...

um

Disconnection is perhaps more difficult to develop if you're just reading numbers or if you're just living in a bubble online where you're not really understanding the experience

uh of the groups that...

um

for different reasons you might be antagonizing, right?

And so yes, it's way of uh creating spaces of dialogue and connection, but not just using words.

um And there's a lot of talk about mini publics and citizen assemblies that are very much based on talk and uh exchange of rational arguments.

And that work very well for some groups, but not for all.

And I think what we're trying to do with bringing in the arts is really just not thinking about rational exchanges, but also emotions and the role that emotions play in democratic

setting, the importance of empathizing with different experiences of life and of the world.

And specifically, we want to really center the experience of those groups that are often...

the ones and not.

for various reasons that are kept at the margins and are often victimized, right?

And through this process, the idea is that they also develop a better sense of agency and collective agency, right?

And so you move from individual, what might be perceived as individual weaknesses to actually uh systemic oppressions and then building collective agency to address

these oppressions, right?

So that's all, that's what the theatre of the oppressed is based on.

I don't know if uh you're familiar with the work of Paolo Freire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.

um I really recommend if you have an encounter today, but it's really about democracy as emancipatory education, right?

um And so that's the work we're doing.

So centering.

experiences that are often um marginalized and using those experiences as catalyzer for dialogues uh with the wider community to co-create uh policies that can help us foster

social justice.

I think that's the intent of the project.

It's beautiful.

I really like the approach.

yeah, a lot of time we forget about emotions.

And while we try to analyze the text, don't know, logic, fallacies, and so on, but there is emotions.

Yeah, and I think uh perhaps a mistake of liberal democracies is that uh it can feel very technocratic, right?

And I think that also ushered in uh populistic reactions and populist, particularly far-right populism is very uh good at uh using emotions, although negative emotions,

right?

fear.

And so I think we might need to engage more with emotion, but the positive emotions like hope and empathy and solidarities and all those feelings that connect us as human beings.

How do you think a social movement can use technologies or maybe other kinds of governance in a way that they can be heard?

oh

I think um social movements are already uh reclaiming a lot of these new democratic innovations, right?

And there is a...

There is also like in the digital world, there has been a social movement led reaction to the commercial social media, uh social networks and uh social media platforms with civic

tech.

And so there is a lot of exploration of how we can...

uh

use digital democracy also to support this work.

I don't think that...

participation and democracy can only happen online.

I think what I'm finding in my work that in person, like physical connection is really important to create a sense of belonging.

And I think because society are increasingly atomized and particularly young people have been living online all their lives and

And I think having these spaces where we actually connect are incredibly important.

The young people I work with uh possibly recognize the importance of connection and feeling heard by their peers.

has even greater than seeing the policy change and having the policymakers listening to them which is also important but it's like this connection, this sense of belonging and

that is where they really develop their democratic skills as well right and I think online

you can never fully uh create that.

And so I use a lot civic tech and I don't know if you are familiar uh with the platform, the SIDIM.

Yes, so we use the SIDIM for our work to support the work that happens in person.

And so, for instance, the policy proposals that we co-create through this theatre uh improvisation and sort of theatre-led dialogue.

are then added to the CDEM as a policy tracker, where we can track implementation of these proposals.

And the idea is to make the whole process more visibly accountable, because the whole community and the young people can check this policy tracker.

And each commitment is linked to specific organizations.

the idea is that

things uh don't get lost or don't get lost as easily as they could have they could otherwise but it's very difficult to create uh critical mass in these civic tech platforms

right because

No matter how great they are in terms of like helping more interactive participation of people, there's not many people there.

What's happening is that the public sphere, whether social movements or individual citizens, we're all in commercial platforms.

And it's very difficult to create a sort of a response to these commercial platforms where we have no control over the algorithms, right?

And what we see and what we don't see.

there's such little transparency about how these communities are formed, right?

And engineered sometimes.

this bubble created by algorithms uh and so that's problematic and I think but then like it's very difficult to create a sort of publicly accountable platform that can build the

same critical mass right as the commercial platform.

I don't know what your experience is in this respect and if you use civic tech and you probably yeah.

I saw that there is a...

I mean, build a platform nowadays, it's quite easy.

Having the people using the platform is hard.

I think everyone is building their platforms, but I'm like, can't really create that critical mass that can make a difference, right?

Maybe instead of building everyone his own or her own individual platform, collective effort to build, I don't know, their platform or something that can really compete with

commercial social network that as you said are sort of black box in terms of algorithm.

And also, I mean, the aim of social network is to...

he has a stick in front of the screen.

exactly.

And I think there is a place for civic tech and technology, but I don't see democracy only happening there, right?

It's more like supporting and helping us continue the conversation, but I think we need to connect more uh in person.

I think that's what I find.

that's where the magic happens, know, and the things develop through these new connections.

Yeah.

But do you mean just like in person or in person like with the help of some AI civic tech tool?

um Because I also when you were talking, I also believe that in person is really like where you can feel emotions.

Also like in a video call you can feel more than uh just chatting.

Yeah.

I was thinking that maybe the future of civic tech tools should go in this direction, so where people interact with other people, but at the same time there is like uh a system, a

software that can help that people.

I don't know maybe uh what...

is at the moment what could be like a normal political conversation between two people, then it also becomes like a sort of public conversation because uh that data is extracted

and contributes to something bigger.

really interesting.

You'd have to happen in a transparent way though, because yeah, through platforms that have some sort of public accountability, because otherwise, of course, um there is some

room for manipulation of conversation or how they're edited or how they're right?

uh

But yes, definitely.

um I think there's a lot to explore, but the key is to uh create uh transparencies around these processes.

And so even the role of AI um is very problematic right now, but simply because there is no democratic governance.

of AI, how it works, how it's developing, it's all in hands of private companies, right?

Even the developmental models of AI.

it's beyond even the reach of universities because they don't have the money to compete with the private sector, right?

And attract the best brains or even putting the money for the sort of computing power that is...

needed right for for AI to function and to develop and so that is very problematic so I think all this technological development is fantastic and can support democracy only if

there is also a democratic governance of this technology and accountability and transparency when they are developing and at the moment we're so far away from that.

I don't know if it's too late but

I hope not.

And it makes me think that is a sort of circle, because to have new ways of governance, AI can be helpful, but at the same time, AI as it is now is a sort of black box.

And so it's a sort of circle.

uh

The fact that companies like OpenEye have got so much power over the development of technologies that have uh profound effects on...

all societies is so problematic.

And now I think, em for instance, in the UK there is an agreement between the UK government and OpenAI for AI to enter all public services.

And again, oh what impact will they have on the way the police works or on the way...

know, local government works because we have such little understanding of how AI actually works, right, and such little power on...

oh on controlling how it develops and we know already that there are so many entrenched biases because these models are designed by a very narrow demographics of people that

enjoy certain intersectional privileges as well so yeah it's very very problematic.

I think it's gonna be interesting times ahead but oh

uh But I suppose that's why it's more important than ever to create spaces for people to connect and develop critical thinking skills and collective agency and democratic

capabilities, which at the moment as a society we don't really have.

uh

Yeah, you define interesting times, usually it means bad times.

I read a lot of sci-fi so I think I've got a very dystopian perspective on things.

because that is the thing, like we could actually have like a very, um I would say, just society, like in the future using this technology to maybe, I don't know, distribute power

so that also marginalized community can also have an impact.

Or on the other side, we could also be...

I can't listopic word, I don't know everyone on TikTok, not able to...

Exactly.

It's the difference between the Star Trek world and the Black Mirror world, right?

So we'll see.

We'll see where we develop.

I think there's a lot of people working on positive innovations and democratic innovation.

There's some fantastic work that the commons do.

and also the civic tech commons as well, um But there's still not the sort of critical mass rise, we still, em yeah, very...

it's difficult to connect uh and perhaps yeah we should try and connect his experiences more and create his spaces create create spaces for cross-pollination and um and yes I

mean there have been some exciting experiences of like the municipalist ah waves right and the fearless city I don't know if you've heard about them uh but

These are cities that really invest a lot in participatory governance and create connections between institution and social movements and prioritize social justice.

And Barcelona was the sort of leading city of this network of so-called fearless cities, but they're all over the world.

But then it's very difficult to sustain these networks.

And I think there's also very little awareness.

of what these different cities and experiences are actually doing, there's very little media attention, so yeah, it's difficult to sustain and keep the momentum on these

alternative ways of understanding and governing societies, right?

But there's also a lot of work, so yeah.

uh

can be done also.

oh

I think like there's all these more autonomous zones of resistance, right?

And finding ways of connecting them is going to be more and more important, I think.

uh Yeah, I realized that um we, wanted to talk about assemblage, we haven't got there yet.

Exactly, I wanted to ask you if this can be connected in some way to your paper.

uh

I really think so because assemblage gives us that lens, right, to look at democracy in all its dynamism and its fluidity.

uh it really refers, assemblage comes, assemblage theory comes from the Les Nguatari, right, to philosophers that in the 1980s.

published a thousand plateaus and they explore, they basically define assemblages as these dynamic configurations of people, institutions, technology, spaces, and including

non-human and material entities like objects, animals, or even the weather.

And so all these elements come together to shape processes, right, to create these dynamic configurations.

that are called assemblages.

And then if you, I liked his lens to look at democracy because he also gives an opportunity to recognise its messiness and its fluidity and so traditional views of

democracy as a system and often just institutional arrangements are um

don't really uh reflect the sort of fluidity and relationality of democracy that is always in the making, right?

Always in a state of becoming.

then obviously assemblages are not inherently democratic.

They can also reproduce inequality, but...

what makes an assemblage democratic is its orientation towards freedom, equality and inclusion and its openness to transformation.

And so I find it useful the way Deleze and Guattari talk about power.

and yes, now that can relate to the work that to the work I do and recently um I also co-edited a special issue on democratic assemblage with Hans Asenbaum.

where they're like I really recommend it if you're interested in this lens because there's some fascinating papers that also look at a statue as a catalyzer for democratic

encounters or even snow right so yeah it's quite interesting and I think it broadens our understanding of uh

practices and I like um the way um power is also understood in assemblages as distributed agencies so as emerging from the interaction among these different components human and

non-human and for example within a digital platform or within a public space and so yeah I um

There's a lot of terminology linked to assemblage but what it can help us really reflect on is this pull and

push and pull dynamics because assemblages are shaped by tensions between, for instance, in democratic assemblages, grassroots activism and institutional control, between openness

and closure, between empowerment and co-optation.

And so I think uh an assemblage lens gives us an opportunity to em zoom in and look at

where there are spaces for change, right, through these interactions.

So I think the sort of assemblage perspective is also what is informing the way we're looking at the participatory processes using co-design and co-creation that we are

implementing and the Inspire project.

I think like...

We're still testing whether Inaoi works as an analytical lens, but also as a...

uh

normative theory of democracy, particularly when it complements critical democracy.

So I'm not sure how familiar you are with critical democratic theory, but I think there's a lot of synergy with assemblage.

uh

it aligns closely like this emphasis on fluidity, contingency, relationality.

So for instance, um I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of fugitive democracy by Sheldon Hulley.

So fugitive democracy...

describes democracy like real democracy as episodic, transient, emergent, right?

And so it arises at a moment of, through moments of collective actions and resistance, but often outside formal institutions.

But it is also precarious because it's constantly under threat from co-optation.

And so uh this conceptualization of democracy really values pluralism, disruptions and radical transformation.

And these qualities really resonates with assemblage emphasis on what Deleze and Guattari called uh de-territorialization.

So Deleze and Guattari talk about territorialization, de-territorialization and re-territorialization, right?

To understand how change

happens, right?

um And so territorialization stabilizes an assemblage, so it will reinforce existing norms, existing hierarchies.

Deterritorialization disrupts these norms and opens space for change and democratic possibilities.

And re-territorialization then occurs when innovations are absorbed back.

into the existing power structures and so this potentially neutralizes that transformative potential right and this push and pull dynamics are at play the whole time and so the

lesson Guattari has is met for it is heuristic of molar

versus molecular desire always in tension.

So the molar desire is like that kind of power that supports stability and control.

So bureaucratic norms for instance or neoliberalism in terms of how we understand the relationship between the economy and politics and molecular desire.

is actually drives creativity and disruption and that often comes from grassroots movement or social movements right and so this dynamics between molar and molecular shows that

power in democratic assemblages is continuously contested and relational and emergent so it's never really static or centralized and so that's why I find it very useful as a lens

to understand

this relationship and to really think about democratic innovations and how they relate to civil society and social movements, but also to em centers of decision-making power in

institutions.

I don't know if that was overwhelming because it's a lot to take in with assemblage and I'm still trying to navigate the work of the Lesse and Gortari.

It's super interesting also the way how power can be conceived in different ways because the lens we use to conceive power it's also changed how we use power and so power can be

hierarchical, collective or like in this case also um

including animals, plants and so on.

So it's very interesting.

think like there's one thing like, I think one of the critiques, the big critiques against assemblage theory is this idea of flat ontology, So treating all entities as equally

agentic.

And this has been criticised because people say, well, you're obscuring power asymmetries by claiming this flat ontology.

em Because then you're saying that...

em

I don't know, like a tree will have the same power as a human being.

But it's not what assemblage tries to do.

um And I think um we can highlight that better when we combine assemblage with critical democratic theory.

And then you can reorient it towards normative goal like justice, equity and ecological sensitivity.

Because actually what assemblage does is it challenges

anthropocentrism, right?

Because by recognizing non-human agency is challenging the anthropocentric lens that we use to understand the world and to make it, right?

And he encourages responsability, right?

um That's a concept that Dana Harraway introduced it.

And this is the ethical responsiveness.

to others that we have.

So we do have a responsibility, but not just towards other humans, also towards the non-human.

And so that's, yeah, that's.

That's the way I think sometimes that the tantology and the distributed power has been misunderstood in assemblage.

But it's not about taking responsibilities away from humans because we do have responsibility by actually recognizing the agency.

of the non-human world.

so making our, the way we even think about democracy and we build democratic institution less anthropocentric.

And I think anthropocentric has led to climate change, right?

And a lot of other things that have used nature as a backdrop for all human actions, but actually this is not sustainable, right?

It made me think, I don't know if you have read it, the mushroom at the end of the world from Anna Tsing.

ah Because the mushroom Matsutake that lives in Sambuosis with the pine.

ah So I will stay here for another hour talking about this.

I think you have to go.

have a podcast number two to continue the conversation.

But yes, I think it's been really lovely.

Thank you for inviting me.

And yeah, I'm always happy to continue to explore these ideas.

Thank you.