Participatory Design – Negotiations in Project Funding Regimes

In this paper, we discuss two emerging controversies in the meeting between participatory design (PD) ideals and the funding regime in an EU-funded cross-sector partnership project with seven partners. We argue that this discussion is much needed within the PD community, as more and more research is funded through outlets that challenge current design practices in PD that emphasize bottom-up and open-ended processes. We argue for a continued need for reflexive PD practices that take implications of publicly funded cross-sector partnerships into account.