Resumen de Our future in space: the physical and virtual opening-up of parliaments to publics

Alex Prior, Maanasa Sivashankar

• Parliaments are physical symbols of nationhood and democracy. Public accessto these spaces is often strictly regulated, yet it remains highly influential topublic experiences of parliament (and their engagement with it). Drawing ondata collected for the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 2022 Global ParliamentaryReport, this article discusses ways in which parliamentary‘space’can beutilised to encourage public engagement. This encompasses the effective useof physical space, virtual reality and augmented reality for the purpose ofpublic engagement. In doing so, we show the most important and effectivestrategy for (re)using, and opening up, parliamentary spaces: thecomplementary use of physical and virtual methods in not only bringingpublics to parliament, but also bringing parliament to public