Sharing ideas II: Vienna

​We felt very fortunate to be able to head out to Vienna in December and take part in a conference on Protest and Dissent. 

The conference brought together a wide range of academics, as well as some activists, to discuss research and experiences of protest. 

We had a great session talking about the project, sharing our ideas, and inviting delegates to try out some of the activities we're planning to use in the community pop-up events. 

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Some of the conclusions we shared with the conference included:

• Women’s narratives illustrate the material & symbolic meaning of place-power relations
• Understanding how power flows between people and places makes it possible to see how different types of people, and different kinds of contention, shape and are shaped by place.
  • ​For instance, power can be found in the relations between people. These relations have meaning which are often associated with particular communities or places. The effort to defend these communities can be a cause of protest. In this way, it's possible to see how power flows from places through people to shape how protest plays out. 
• The interaction between protests and places reveal people’s changing relationship to political and social power,
  • For example, when people are no longer permitted to protest in particular sites because they are owned by private companies, power flows away from the citizen. 
• Methods and ideas can be mutually supporting when they involve a process of empowerment, participation and democratic process of knowledge production 
  
  • ​For instance, one way of emancipating the process of urban design is to enable citizens to participate in determining how the environment is designed 

The conference was also a really good opportunity to try out some of our activities with the conference delegates. 

The photos below show us taking over the conference hotel bar to test some of our ideas! The activities we tried out were 'Paths of Resistance', which invites participants to map the route of a protest they've been on, and 'Design a Protest Space' which involved designing a 'good' site to hold a protest in. 

We were extremely grateful for colleagues' constructive and good humoured approach to our ideas, and we're now rethinking some of the activities based on their feedback

And of course, while we were there, we took the opportunity to have a quick look round Vienna and get into the festive spirit.