The purpose of this paper is to explore uncertainty as a feature of democracy-as-becoming and the implications for nurturing and researching democracy-as-becoming, based on our work as partners in AECED – a 3-year research project funded by Horizon Europe/UKRI with the purpose of enhancing and transforming aesthetic and embodied learning for democracy, conducted through 19 cases in six countries using participatory action research (PAR). We (the UK partner) are conducting cases in professional learning and secondary education. For the project, the principles of democracy-as-becoming are defined as the dimensions of holistic democracy: power sharing, transforming dialogue, holistic learning and relational well-being (Woods 2021). Democracy-as-becoming is, as Montesquieu described democratic equality, “a possibility in need of nurturing care” (Dallmayr 2017: 6). Such nurturing care can lead to democratic relations that activate discovery and freshness of seeing, possibilities for change and creativity, and an experiencing of the passion of the possible (Docherty 2006; see also Woods et al 2023). Yet democracy can also bring great disappointments and uncertainties that pervade the aesthetic and embodied experience of democratic relations. The paper explores the ways in which democracy-as-becoming is subject to uncertainties. It examines challenges that affect the dimensions of democracy-as-becoming and shape uncertainties – challenges such as the ‘complexity conundrum’ in which volatility and complexity create perpetual uncertainty and ambiguity (Varney 2024: 41); dissonances between, on the one hand, democracy and, on the other hand, conflicting organisational rationalities and endemic power inequalities (Woods 2011, Woods 2019); the need for “unlearning certain mindsets, dispositions and behaviours” that are barriers to democratic relations and discourses (Nanwani 2024: 95); and the limitation of viewing social practices, such as leadership, solely in terms of actions rather than as embodied, relational phenomena (Payne and Jääskeläinen 2024). The purpose is not to discover how to eliminate uncertainties, as this is impossible. Rather, it is to understand better the nature of uncertainties distinctive to democracy-as-becoming, what we can learn about democracy-as-becoming by embracing (being with) uncertainty and how we might explore the ways in which participants and researchers in PAR experience uncertainty. The paper will pay particular attention to the value of arts-based and embodied methods of research and reflection in helping to embrace uncertainty through surfacing complexities and fostering flexibility, shared curiosity, transparency and openness to the knowledge and experience of all (Culshaw 2023). We will draw on our experiences of participatory data generation and reflection in the UK cases.

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