Сторінка

An Inspire playbook

What is it?

The Safe(r) Spaces Playbook is a practical guide developed within the INSPIRE project to support the design, facilitation, and evaluation of inclusive civic and democratic participation. It helps organisers, facilitators, and institutions create hybrid and digital participatory spaces, that reduce harm, make power visible, and support meaningful engagement across difference. Rather than offering fixed rules, the playbook provides principles, questions, and tools to help teams reflect on their context, make ethical design choices, and strengthen democratic participation over time.

Who is it for?

This Playbook is intended for people who design, organise, facilitate, moderate, or evaluate participatory processes. This includes public administrations, cultural institutions, civil society organisations, community organisers, researchers, and platform administrators—particularly those working with digital or hybrid participation. It is especially relevant for teams using Decidim or similar civic platforms who want to strengthen inclusion, care, and accountability in practice.

What are Safe(r) Spaces?

A simple definition of safe(r) spaces: For the development of the INSPIRE Safe(r) Spaces Playbook, a safe(r) space is understood as a participatory space, online or hybrid, designed to reduce harm and support inclusive civic and democratic participation. It is not about avoiding disagreement, but about establishing clear norms, care practices, and accessible conditions so people can speak, listen, and engage meaningfully. Safe(r) spaces are shaped through design, facilitation, and shared responsibility, and are essential for ensuring democratic processes are fair, inclusive, and accountable.

Where is it for?

The Playbook applies to hybrid participatory environments, recognising that democratic participation rarely happens in a single space. Online platforms, physical meeting places, institutional settings, and informal community spaces interact and shape one another. Decidim, in particular, was not designed as a purely digital experience, but as a platform that connects online participation with face-to-face processes, facilitation, and collective decision-making. Safe(r) spaces must therefore be designed across digital and hybrid social contexts.

Connect with the Playbook

In addition to practical guidance, the Safe(r) Spaces Playbook is conceived as a living resource that can incorporate reflections from practice. This may include short debate notes, statement reviews, or collective reflections developed after survey analysis or pilot activities, and contributions linked to specific Safe(r) Space dimensions. Using Decidim, these reflections can be shared transparently and revisited over time, supporting collective learning, accountability, and iterative improvement rather than treating safety and inclusion as fixed outcomes.