Educating for participatory active citizenship: an example from the ecological activist field

Based on a short-term ethnography with a grassroots group of young environmental activists in the city of Porto, Portugal, this paper describes and problematizes their use of participatory methodologies to engage individual, community and organizational actors in tackling the problems of global climate change. By initiating what they call a “friendship network” that seeks to achieve democratic and participatory forms of activism, the group brings together both experienced and circumstantial activists (Ollis & Hamel-Green in Aust Adult Learn 55:202–219, 2015) in order to foster plural and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, Situated learning legitimate peripheral participation, 1991). The group does so by promoting the commitment of all actors (including opposite-minded ones) to the co-creation of a 4-day-municipal event on the theme of environmental sustainability. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the strategic mechanism of the group and their actions as a nucleus, we firstly examine some of the groups’ views on civic and political participation (Stack, in Citizenship Studies 16:871–885, 2012) and, secondly, describe and discuss the methodologies they intentionally use to put citizenship-in-action and to foster the activation of ‘standby citizens’ (Amna & Ekman, in Amnå, E., & Ekman, J., Eur Political Sci Rev 6:261–281, 2014). This ethnography enabled us to learn how the group strives to achieve its goals by placing itself in-between the institutional sphere and the public realm: the ethnographer had the opportunity to observe their attempts to, on the one hand, influence decision-making by acquiring a degree of insider status in institutions that legislate and, on the other hand, to engage with large publics, encouraging citizens’ voices and involvement in processes of co-participation focused on promoting ecological consciousness and political change.