Larping for Democracy - guest entry by Annika Waern

Professor Annika Waern from Uppsala University shared her thoughts and insight on Larpocracy at present on her Substack.

Enjoy a teaser of what she had to say, and read the full entry here.

“Last week, my Larpocracy colleagues have been facing reality in two different contexts: the EduLarp conference and Knutepunkt. Both are long-standing semi-academic events directed (primarily) at larp designers and artists, the former with a strong educational focus and the latter more widely scoped. They are also run on yearly basis in the Nordic countries, and hence, both have a strong focus on the larp tradition that’s called ‘Nordic Larp’. I was not able to attend myself, but I have been catching up with them afterwards.

It is fair to say that the project raises a lot of interest, but also many critical questions. This post is an attempt at summarising those questions and start thinking about how Larpocracy might be able to address them.

’But this is something we ALREADY do - and we are not part of the project! You are missing out on our expertise!’

Oh, I wish we could involve everyone! Throughout my academic career, larp designers have ranked among the most intelligent, skilled, creative, and resourceful people i know. (They are also fun to party with.) They outrank many scholars, professional designers in other fields, and artists that I have met.

But a project is just a project - it needs to have a limited set of organisations and people working their asses off towards set goals. The partners were selected firstly on their profile and background, but secondly on their ability to do precisely that. The project will organise several events, including larp festivals, where we will actively seek collaboration with designers, artists and organisers outside the project. This might be a less influential role, but at least you do not have to write time and expense reports for the EU commission.”

Read the rest over on her Substack page here.