Becoming a Designer at the Design Lab: Empowerment and participation in children’s design activities

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This paper draws on data from an interview study with children engaged in a leisure time design lab situated in a socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhood. The study accounts for how the children involved in the design activities make sense of their experiences of participating in the design lab. Some perspectives on the relationship between design and empowerment are discussed and three empowering functions of the activities are identified that serve to empower the children in different ways: 1) The creative laboratory – How the activities allow for exploration and experimentation of both new identities and of new possible futures. 2) Community participation – How the design lab enables participation in the local community and reflections on what it means to be a citizen. 3) Playful apprenticeship – How the lab builds a peer-culture where children are continuously addressed and presented as equal colleagues in the lab, both in internal and external settings.