Exploring how municipalities involve citizens.
This project is about ”Gjestebud”, and in more general terms about how local democracy can be facilitated. Gjestebud is a method for involving citizens in to municipal processes. The reason it exists is party due to the fact that involving citizens in processes is mandatory by law, but also partlydue to Svelvik Kommune innovating, and finding a method that fit their process well. The basic concept of gjestebud is that the municipality finds an area where they would like to involve its citizens, send out a short brief for the topic or issue to people it thinks have important feedback to give, and get them to invite their friends to discuss the issue. It can besummarized like this:
”Gjestebud is about citizens inviting friends to their home and discussing issues from the municipality.”
The task of this project is to look in to this process, and look at how it is screwed together with the aim of designing some intervention or concept connected to this process. Since this is a design project, design methods and design thinking will be used as the main tools for investigating the system.