Generating Stakeholder Workshops for Policymaking in Digital Environments through Participatory Service Design

This article presents the design and research process of a design team of four designer-researchers, who are also the authors of this article and collaborated to develop training guidelines and a toolset for stakeholder workshops. The intention was to use the series of stakeholder workshops as a key method for developing policy recommendations about the role of arts in mitigating societal challenges. The stakeholder workshops were implemented across Europe by the partners of the European Commission H2020-funded project, Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS). Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the designer-researchers had to transfer all activities, such as face-to-face workshops and their own work processes, to a digital environment and online participation. The digital toolset and user guidelines were aimed at training the project partners to conduct stakeholder workshops and collect data for creating cultural policy roadmaps that would be context-specific for the European region where they were located. The design process for creating the digital artefacts, such as the digital toolset, user guidelines and online workshop environment, is discussed in this article, in addition to this study’s opportunities and limitations.