David Gauntlett: Participation Culture, Creativity, and Social Change

Participation culture, creativity,
and social change

On the eighteenth birthday of the World Wide Web, David Gauntlett will take this opportunity – at his Inaugural Lecture in central London – to consider some of its impact and implications.

The particular significance of Tim Berners-Lee's original vision is that it involved people making and sharing things – all users as contributors, not just readers. Thus began the shift from the 'mass audience' towards creative individuals and communities.

David Gauntlett has had a long engagement with the Web, having produced the award-winning website Theory.org.uk for over a decade. Several years before the rise of 'Web 2.0', he was writing about the Web as a creative and collaborative playground of everyday culture, politics, and self-expression. He has continued to embed an interest in the Web with broader research about creativity and ways to engage people in social research and social issues.

Gauntlett considers these themes in the context of a broader growth in home-made culture, craft, recycling and remaking, which connects with environmental issues, transition towns and cities, and therefore – in one grand bound – the future of the planet. He will argue that this making-and-sharing culture may foster the 'tools for thinking' which will be required to solve social and environmental problems.

David Gauntlett is the author of several books including Creative Explorations (2007), which was shortlisted for the Times Higher 'Young Academic Author of the Year' award.