Our first LIFT Talk is this Thursday! Our own Mark Ball chairs this discussion on The Digital Democracy, a subject close to his heart. Charlie Tims, one of our speakers, sent us these thoughts to kick off the debate:

I'm Charlie. I'm an associate of the think tank Demos and generally interested in social research and design. I don't know much about theatre, but my friend took me to see a Punchdrunk show in Boston last year. I was compelled by the way that immersive theatre decoupled the audience's experience of the play from the script. I could piece together my own experience. I feel that too often social research is communicated like a script, from which the reader has no opt out. This is emphasised by a media culture which prioritises adversarial debates between two binary points of view, inflamatory comment pieces and editorials. This crowds out the beauty of social research and the relaying of human experience - which is, after all, what motivates most people I know to do it. It's also bad because it takes think tanks (who are the main platform for social research and new ideas) further away from the purpose upon which their charitable status is conferred - to educate the public. I also think it's cerebrally out of kilter with the way that people piece together their version of the truth now - across multiple tabs, in forums and through search engines. Seeing the show in Boston basically made me want to do the same de-coupling but with a social-research report. I haven't done this yet, but I had a stab at something like it a few weeks ago. I'm looking forward to the discussion on Thursday.