On 14-16 November 2013, Aarhus University is hosting a conference for researchers, cultural actors and artists from a range of different fields that will focus on the potential of user-driven production, DIY, participatory planning and social entrepreneurship.

The impetus for the conference is the recently increasing emphasis on citizens as producers in a wide range of areas – including urban development, art and digital culture – as well as the corresponding interdisciplinary research focus on the political and social potential in involvement and participation.

The conference addresses this participatory turn in cultural studies and asks: How do we understand and evaluate the positive political, cultural and social potential in this development.

Deadline for submission of abstracts is 20 June.

• Call for papers

The conference is organised in corporation with a wide range of actors in the city and will thus experiment with different ways of integrating research in various cultural and political settings. In this way, the conference will search for new opportunities for increasing the impact of the contributions, not only within the academic community but also in the actual surroundings of the conference.

RETHINK Participatory Cultural Citizenship is a collaboration between Aarhus University and Aarhus 2017, and is the first of a series of conferences leading to Aarhus being the European Capital of Culture in 2017: www.aarhus2017.dk/