Paper short abstract:

In this panel, I'm interested in reflecting through the lens of the commons on a decade of working, as a practitioner and campaigner, on issues of contested space, urban development, and democratic innovation in Northern Ireland. A question that's stayed with me throughout, and which I see as being central to the idea of participatory democracy is: who gets to imagine the future? As multiple and overlapping crises deepen, and liberal democracy flounders, what are the conditions, tools, and spaces necessary to imagine a hopeful human future?