Safe(r) Spaces Crash Care Course

Developed within the INSPIRE project, the Crash → Care Course invites organisations, facilitators, researchers and public institutions to reflect on their participatory practices and identify ways to improve them. It was created through research, conversations with practitioners and communities, and lessons from participatory pilots across Europe.

The course combines accessible information with practical exercises, digital tools and resources. Rather than presenting a fixed model, it encourages facilitators to examine their own processes: who can participate, which barriers people encounter, how power is distributed, what risks participants carry, and whether their contributions lead to meaningful outcomes.

The resources can be used before, during and after participation. They help teams assess their existing practices, prepare more inclusive activities, support participants, address problems as they emerge and reflect on what should change in future processes.

Why safe(r) spaces?

No participatory space can guarantee complete safety. Participants enter democratic processes with different identities, experiences and relationships to power. A space that feels welcoming to one person may expose another to discrimination, surveillance, exclusion or retaliation.

For this reason, the course speaks about safe(r) spaces. The term acknowledges that safety is never complete or permanent. It must be negotiated, practiced, and reassessed throughout a participatory process.

The framework considers eight interconnected conditions: autonomy and agency, intersectional inclusion, diverse knowledges, reflexivity and iteration, relational power, care, safety and non-retaliation, time, and accountability and consequence. Together, they help facilitators consider not only who is invited, but also who can participate meaningfully, whose knowledge is recognised and what happens after people contribute.

Embedding care online and offline

Care needs to be embedded in how participatory processes are designed and facilitated, both offline and online.

In face-to-face settings, this may involve accessible venues, shared agreements, different forms of expression, realistic pacing and clear responses to harm. Online, it also means examining platform access, digital confidence, moderation, privacy, data use and consent. In hybrid processes connecting on and offline can be difficult.

This is why the Crash → Care Course has been placed on the INSPIRE participatory platform. The platform is not only a place to publish the results. It allows the course itself to function as a participatory resource: people can explore exercises, access tools and information, apply them to their work and move between reflection and practice.

By bringing the course into a digital participatory environment, INSPIRE aims support building care into the structures, tools and relationships where participation happens. 

Explore the Crash → Care Course and Safe(r) Spaces resources.