#60 Activating passenger television

Public transport is a place where a wide variety of people come together for a short period of time. The idea of designing this space as a place of democratic experience is not new, as the "Metropolis" discussion project in Dresden shows, for example. And our idea today also revolves around the streetcar as a place for entertaining political and educational impulses. Our focus here is primarily on the activating use of the passenger television established in most streetcars. We have several possible applications in mind:

What would it be like, for example, to combine quite ordinary public transportation routes with a political city tour of unseen stories from urban society or marginalized perspectives? Stories on specific topics from urban society could be collected in advance and prepared accordingly. It would also be possible to provide political and historical information on various locations along the streetcar route. The ride could also be combined with an audio guide or even interactive audio walks by displaying QR codes.

We copied another idea from the Berlin theater and performance collective Turbo Pascal: Fading in simple instructions and/or questions could namely create so-called "thinking spaces" in which the people on the ride are sensitized to each other. One instruction could be: "Look around you in the streetcar and silently answer the following questions for yourself:" The questions could then vary depending on the topic or political-educational objective: Who is the youngest passenger? Who is the oldest? Who enjoys their paid work? Who should get more for their work? Who does unpaid care work? And so on.

Anyways, we are thrilled at how this simple tool can create connections between strangers and share recognition along the way. Just give it a try.