‘TRADERS’ (short for ‘Training Art and Design Researchers in Participation for Public Space’) is a European FP7/Marie Curie Multi-ITN research project in which different institutions collaborate. At Design Academy Eindhoven the TRADERS project (partner in the readership City and Coutryside) investigates a new method for mapping public space.

Art and design research can contribute in interesting ways to engaging citizens, policy makers and private partners to participate in public space (issues). The methods of doing so are, however, under-explored. Therefore, the TRADERS project researches the ways in which art and design researchers can ‘trade’ or exchange with multiple participants and disciplines in public space projects and – at the same time – trains them in doing so.

TRADERS focuses on developing and testing a methodological framework that can guide future artists and designers (or researchers and practitioners in other disciplines) to work in participatory and public space contexts. In the project six (PhD) researchers in Belgium, the Netherlands, UK and Sweden. will test and develop a part of this framework, depending on the expertise of the host institution. The (complementary) research approaches/methods covered are:

• Intervention (LUCA School of the Arts and KU Leuven)

• Play (University of Gothenburg)

• Performative mapping (Design Academy Eindhoven)

• Data-mining (Royal College of Art)

• Modelling in dialogue (Chalmers University of Technology)

• Curating (KU Leuven)"

The TRADERS project commenced in September 2013 and will run until August 2017, of which the training program has a duration of three years.

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Further reading
For more information about TRADERS see the project website.


This project receives funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 608299.