Action research and other approaches, where the goal is to solve a real-life problem and create change in the lived reality of people or organisations, pose challenges for researchers who simultaneously find themselves acting as change agents: initiators, leaders, designers and facilitators of processes, bringing people and organisations together, seeking and finding resources, and offering their own ideas based on personal values and assumptions, among other things (e.g. Massingham, 2014). At the same time, researchers are influenced by the people and organisations they work with, and vice versa (Al-Natour, 2011; Råheim et al, 2016). Researchers at Tallinn University have been engaged in a number of projects (Horizon Democrat, ReCoCreateYouth, TLU ELU/LIFE project and Democrat+) with the aim of innovating and creating change in the way citizenship education is conducted and how citizens are ‘formed’ in the everyday lived experience and democratic institutions - adopting ‘democratic experimentalism’ (Sabel, 2012) and Living Lab approaches (see e.g. Ruiz-Calleja et al, 2017; Ballon & Schuurmann, 2017), bringing people and organizations together, initiating processes or projects, explaining and exploring the problems, forming partnerships, designing and conducting workshops, meetings, mentoring, engaging university students, etc. The role of the researcher has been to design, coordinate and facilitate the (project) process (sometimes collaboratively), while also collecting data and facilitating the learning and reflection for all participants. This approach could be described as design-based research (DBR) and community-based participatory design (PD) allowing for the researcher and participants to work together in co-creating novel solutions that meet the needs of the community, making it relevant for the teachers, youth, policymakers and others involved (DiSalvo & DiSalvo, 2014). That includes deciding together on the learning and research goals, engaging relevant stakeholders, co-designing and testing solutions (new methods, approaches, tools, etc), learning and reflecting throughout the process. DBR seeks to create new and potentially generalizable knowledge, aiming at creating the next level of knowledge and methodological materials for each subsequent iteration round, ‘design principles’, and theory (Hall, 2020). We have emphasized finding practical transferable outcomes, making it necessary to find ways to make sense of the researchers’ dual role as democratic agents, designers and researchers. Using an autoethnographic approach (Ellis et al, 2011), this study focused on exploring the experiences and strategies that the researchers adopted, failures and perceived limitations, as well as learnings and surprises. We seek to contribute to a discussion among those who undertake such research and development projects.

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