Abstract
Origin
The youth website of the Provincial Parliament presented here is a cooperation between the Provincial Parliament administration and the Faculty of Design and Arts at the Free University of Bolzano. The initiative for this came from the provincial parliament administration, at first only to create a new visual design for the then existing youth website, which was outdated in terms of technology and design. However, through our workshops with school classes, a more fundamental need for up-to-date, understandable and trustworthy information about local politics emerged among young people. The project was therefore put on a broader basis with the participation of the high school students and the students of the Faculty of Design and Arts. This participatory design process spanned approximately 1 1/2 years and included 250 stakeholders.
Key goals
- Raising awareness: The platform offers an opportunity to raise awareness for democracy and politics among young people in the region. In this way, it contributes to political education from the institutional place of politics, the parliament. It does this in a balanced way, presenting opinions and arguments from all sides.
- Participation: It gives the possibility for the participation of young people through its open editorial concept. This means: making contributions yourself; researching political topics and presenting them in simple language in a way that is easy to understand; relating your own experience and everyday life to politics.
- Activation: It can build a bridge to lessons in schools (civic education). Participation as a school class makes political education more interesting. A liberal understanding of democracy can thus be experienced in a lively, active and thus sustainable way for young people already at school.