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A participatory process is a sequence of participatory activities (e.g. first filling out a survey, then making proposals, discussing them in face-to-face or virtual meetings, and finally prioritizing them) with the aim of defining and making a decision on a specific topic.
Examples of participatory processes are: a process of electing committee members (where candidatures are first presented, then debated and finally a candidacy is chosen), participatory budgets (where proposals are made, valued economically and voted on with the money available), a strategic planning process, the collaborative drafting of a regulation or norm, the design of an urban space or the production of a public policy plan.
[Safe(r) Spaces] Care, Safety, and Non-retaliation
Designing participatory spaces where care, agency, transparency, and shared responsibility make meaningful participation possible.
About this process
This process explores how participatory spaces can be designed around care, safety, agency, and non-retaliation. Drawing on trauma-informed, feminist, intersectional, and participatory governance approaches, it proposes practical commitments for co-defining norms, making risks and responsibilities explicit, and ensuring that participants can engage without fear of harm or negative consequences.
As Hera Hussein’s work with Chayn demonstrates, participants’ ability to engage meaningfully depends on whether they can configure the conditions of their participation, when to speak, when to withdraw, what to share, and what to keep private, without fear of harm or negative consequences (Hussein, 2025).
‘For Chayn, our trauma-informed principles have emerged from ongoing learnings and interactions with survivors, who are users of our services but also the community of survivors who have created our services… such is the beauty of participatory design, which involves hundreds of people across the world with different insights and experiences, that the common themes bubbled to the surface’
From a participatory governance perspective, this means designing processes that prioritise care, transparency, and clear limits. Hussein emphasises that safety is not simply protection from harm, but the presence of real options and informed choice.
Reference: inspire-PART-2026-05-19