Maps of Ruins and Dreams

Hidden relations, contradictions and emerging possibilities

This session is part of the Public Vitality Camp 2026 and is convened by Eva Duran Sánchez from the Civic Software Foundation, connecting collaborative technology, feminist methods and practices for redistributing power through information and participation.

Complex systems are often mapped through what can be named, measured or formally connected. Yet what shapes a system also includes lived experience, language, symbols, memory, contradictions and relationships that remain difficult to see from any single perspective. These less visible dimensions can influence what people notice, whose knowledge counts, and which possibilities for change become imaginable.

What becomes visible when we map not only a system’s recognised structures, but also the relationships, absences and tensions that usually remain unseen?

Beginning with a short embodied walk, participants create individual maps before bringing selected elements into small-group and collective sense-making. Drawing on questions and experiences emerging across the Camp, we explore hidden connections, changing narratives, overlooked dependencies and places where different perspectives reinforce or challenge one another. The aim is not to produce one definitive map, but to develop richer ways of speaking about complexity, discover connections across fields, and identify relationships or questions worth carrying into the next 100 days.

Welcome perspectives

The working language is English, with openness to contributions in German. We particularly welcome perspectives from:

civil society and community organising

public policy and administration

feminist and participatory practice

systems thinking and complexity

civic technology, data and AI

design, visual practice and storytelling

research and facilitation across disciplines

No mapping experience is required. Particularly valuable are people bringing questions or experiences from other Camp sessions that might change when seen in relation to a wider field.

Important notes

The Camp format is a volunteer-developed prototype and intentionally simple in how it is organised. Please bring your own food and drinks, and feel free to bring something to share.

Please register as well for the walk up and walk down from S Heerstraße to Teufelsberg of this day. So you can participate in the held structure of the camp, we can tune in together and cross pollinate across the sessions.

The Public Vitality Camp is a shared learning space for people already working on societal, institutional, technological and ecological challenges. Across the sessions, we work on concrete questions and tensions and explore what enables people, institutions and communities to remain capable of acting under increasingly difficult conditions – and how decisions made today expand or constrain future possibilities.

Here you can discover further sessions and register or apply to participate.