Between 1992 and 1997, a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro used theatre to involve those most marginalised by Brazilian society in reimagining and redesigning key policy across health, education and employment. In just four years, 13 laws were passed, and a new policymaking process was born: Legislative Theatre.

With the UK’s governments new focus on reinvigorating public participation in policymaking, what can be learnt from Legislative Theatre?

In a community center in Glasgow, Scotland, a young person on a makeshift stage faces a group of city council staff. He has just performed a scene in which he cannot enter a park near his home because the surrounding sidewalks don’t have accessible curb cuts; he is a wheelchair user.

In a school gym in New York City in 2014, a group of LGBTQ youth performed a play they had devised based on their daily realities. In the opening scene, a transgender woman experienced a domestic dispute; neighbours overheard and called the police.

How do we, as citizens, begin to participate in designing and changing policy, before we are able to articulate the relationship between what we experience in our daily lives, and the laws, rules and designs that impact those experiences?