For me, participation is an ongoing, relational process shaped by how we co-create the material world. I am deeply interested in how caring relationships are built through the spaces we share, the tools we use, the materials we configure, and the everyday environments we build together.

Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, I view participation as an evolving process driven by everyday reassembly of ‘things’, whether that be words (as Bakhtin explored), or physical objects, policies, and services as I explore. This lens highlights how the ways that our immediate and shared material world are reconfigured, shape and reshape our ethical engagement with one another.

Inspired by feminist care ethics, I propose that rigid, rules-based frameworks of participation overlook the informal, relational dimensions that sustain meaningful engagement. These frameworks — which include formal public consultations, standardised feedback surveys, bureaucratic compliance procedures, and institutional pipelines like elections — treat citizens as entirely autonomous individuals. They assume that anyone can simply show up, navigate the system, and exercise their legal right to participate regardless of systemic disadvantage. However, if physical environments are hostile, digital tools require high-tech literacy, or everyday systems isolate people, this formal “right to participate” becomes empty. Meaningful participation cannot merely be legislated or scheduled; it must be relationally and materially sustained.

By adopting a care-based approach, my practice shifts the focus away from these transactional checkboxes and toward designing the infrastructures of care that make participation possible in the first place. In practice, this means exploring and advocating for reconfigurable environments — such as community gardens, public craft studios, or accessible community hubs — that people can manipulate, change, and own together. These spaces encourage the casual, informal everyday interactions where trust and relationships organically take root.

Understanding how to develop and implement this relational approach is the core focus of my practice and research. Currently, I am exploring these dynamics through The Fieldwork Project, a Community Interest Company that combines community-based practice and research. Through creative, land-based, and participatory work, we co-create spaces where new ways of organising, relating, and supporting each other can flourish — particularly in contexts marked by exclusion, displacement, and structural inequality.