The growing distancing of young people from representative institutions, the weakening of civic trust, and the rise of far-right rhetoric to which they are vulnerable, paint a picture that calls for exploring new pedagogical approaches capable of strengthening democratic cultures. This phenomenon reveals a profound emotional disconnect: for many young people, political and social reality is perceived as distant, alien, and irrelevant to their lives. Faced with this situation, traditional approaches to education for democracy show persistent limitations by prioritising formal knowledge (Zyngier, 2011), which often neglects the emotional and relational dimension where true commitment to eco-social issues is anchored.

Commitment arises through an emotional movement that draws us towards the collective. Involvement is rooted in a context, always political, that shapes our desire to act (Stewart, 2007). In this sense, affections, understood as forces circulating between bodies, spaces, and practices that make up both the intimate and the public (Berlant, 1998), operate as catalysts that can reorient the construction of knowledge. From this perspective, and taking up bell hooks “invitation to imagine ‘new and different ways of engaging students” (hooks, 2022), this proposal is guided by the following central research question: How can affections that promote greater social involvement among young people be mobilised through pedagogical practice?

To answer this question, we draw on a conception of affect as a force that traverses situations and bodies, modulating their capacity to affect and be affected (Massumi, 2002). It operates as a vibration that reorganises the field of experience and may or may not crystallise into recognisable emotions. It does not reside “within” individuals, but between them, shaping affective atmospheres (Quintana, 2023; Zembylas, 2022). In this sense, creative or artistic pedagogical methods can function as spaces for exposure and encounter, where the personal becomes relational, the relational political, and the political livable (Ahmed, 2014). Michalinos Zembylas (2022) points out that affective environments are inseparable from democratic education, since participatory processes are not only thought out: they are felt, inhabited and embodied (Hickey-Moody, 2013, 2016).

Within this framework, our objectives are: (1) To reflect, through the account of three pedagogical scenes from the CCLabs, on how different pedagogical methods can operate as affective triggers; (2) To analyse the translation processes through which the intensities generated in the laboratories are catalysed by pedagogical mediation towards recognisable forms of agency and involvement on the part of the students; (3) To address the need to rethink democratic education as a pedagogical practice that places the affective dimension at the centre as a condition for meaningful engagement.

To address this question, this communication builds on the Horizon Europe Democracy Meets Arts: Critical Change Labs for Building Democratic Cultures through Creative and Narrative Practices (CCLAB) project. The CCLAB project is developed by a consortium of ten European institutions. The project aims to identify the challenges of youth democratic participation and develop a pedagogical model capable of addressing them. To this end, it integrates principles of critical pedagogy (Ahmed, 2025; Freire, 2007) with the ChangeLab method (Virkkunen, 2013), incorporating creative, narrative and artistic practices throughout three cycles of Participatory Action Research (PAR).

To address the initial question, this study adopts a qualitative interpretative approach aimed at understanding how different pedagogical methods developed in CCLabs shaped notable forms of involvement and engagement among young people. To this end, three specific scenarios in which this mobilisation was particularly noticeable are described and analysed. The analysis is based on a corpus composed of three internal reports from the CCLAB project, corresponding to the three cycles of Participatory Action Research, as well as field diaries. These documents were prepared by the consortium's researchers based on the implementation of CCLabs in formal and non-formal education contexts. Although they are not ethnographies in the classical sense, they function as situated institutional narratives that capture significant scenes, methods and perceived shifts that marked a change in disposition or generated a verifiable impact on the process (Flanagan, 1954; Kreps, 2018). It is important to emphasise that the project did not initially conceptualise affective-democratic environments as deliberately designed pedagogical elements. However, retrospective analysis of these narratives allows us to identify how certain strategies operated as affective catalysts, revealing a fundamental pedagogical dimension that emerged from the practice itself. From this corpus, three significant scenes were deliberately selected. The selection and description of the scenes focuses on three CCLabs developed in different educational centres in the city of Barcelona. The selection criterion was the intensity of the shift observed: documented episodes were identified in which a significant change in the degree of agency, connection or commitment to the project on the part of the young people was recorded. This selection aims to provide an in-depth analysis of moments in which the use of specific methods revealed their ability to mobilise emotions and reorient involvement. This decision responds to a logic of situated knowledge: the researchers participated directly in these processes and experienced the scenes analysed, which allows for a more refined access to the affective modulations that permeated these situations. This approach acknowledges the complexity and non-linear nature of affective processes and seeks, through the illustrative power of case studies, to offer keys to an affective pedagogy that effectively mobilises student engagement. It also recognises that affective environments cannot be fully controlled; however, they can be modulated, sometimes even inadvertently. The potential risks associated with this situation include the possibility that teachers may be confronted with students' emotional expressions without having sufficient resources to manage them effectively.

The affective dimension has operated as a cross-cutting infrastructure that has conditioned the forms of involvement observed in different contexts. The three scenes are described below: Scene 1: the group decides to work on the theme of ‘affective responsibility’. In the fifth session, we propose a guided visualisation that allows participants to speculate, through mental images, on a transformed society. This method generates an affective connection with the possibilities for change. In the subsequent discussion, we observe a notable shift that translates into concrete proposals with a high level of social commitment, such as a community network map or an affective responsibility manual for families. The exercise acts as a catalyst that redirects the projects towards situated engagement. Scene 2: upon arrival, we encountered significant resistance from the group to participating in the project. They did not connect with the proposed artistic dynamics. However, they underwent a transformation when they went out to do fieldwork. One of the teams, which was addressing insecurity in the underground, physically went to the nearest station to observe the location of cameras and security systems. This act turned abstract research into a lived experience that made them understand the relevance of their topic. The direct encounter with reality outside their usual space generated renewed involvement. Scene 3: The group was marked by very uneven participatory dynamics. Male voices dominated the space. When we proposed that the students develop their own creative project, a shift in agency occurred. The girls' involvement emerged significantly when a space was created where their voices and thoughts became visible and legitimate, activating a participation that had previously been silenced. In this sense, the affective dimension operates as a key condition for democratic learning, enabling participation and agency that transform the abstract relationship with the social into an embodied involvement.

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