Creating conditions for cultural democracy through participatory action research

This article explores how participatory action research can contribute to the democratization of cultural governance through the reactivation of direct democratic practices in local settings. Drawing on the EPICA project, which examined public space, cultural infrastructure, and citizen participation in post-socialist Serbia, the article critically engages with the legacy and potential of local community councils as spaces of direct democracy. It highlights how methods of co-creation, collaborative decision-making, and community-based cultural programming can serve as research tools as well as interventions into the political architecture of exclusion and fragmentation. While reflecting on the ethical tensions and structural limitations of participatory research under project-based funding, the article positions cultural democracy not as a policy objective but as a lived process rooted in situated knowledge, collective care, and the redistribution of institutional power.