Democracy
Challenge
Selecting what is worthy of display in an exhibition is normally the remit of expert individuals. Democracy aimed to challenge this with an exhibition which asked the public not only to submit work, but also to evaluate what should and shouldn't be displayed. Our aim was to create the most democratic exhibition in the world.
Idea
We began with an open call which asked designers to submit a piece of work that responded to the theme of democracy through our exhibition website. As submissions were made, the website became a forum for public evaluation of the design works, with users commenting on individual pieces and voting for what should be included in the final exhibition.
The 51 pieces of work which recieved the most votes were exhibited digitally in the gallery space, each sized depending on the number of votes that it had recieved. By digitally displaying this work we could continue to encourage visitors to interact with the exhibits by voting for the pieces that they felt most deserving from their mobile phones or through a paper ballot. All votes from mobile phones were instantly reflected in the digital exhibition by resizing the artworks to reflect the new vote.
Visitors to the exhibition were also encouraged to leave comments about the exhibition and about democracy on plinths in the centre of the exhibition.
Response
The Democracy website received 28,542 visits during the four week call for entry period from 14,297 unique visitors. 1,767 individuals took the time to register with the website.
498 pieces of work were submitted to the competition by members, and 1,262 comments were posted about the artworks.
By encouraging those taking part in the competition to spread the word by using 'share this on facebook' and 'share this on twitter' tools we recieved 3,549 visitors from Facebook and 1,448 from Twitter, we also gained a lot of publicity through design blogs.