Participation and consent

Open World creates conditions for possibility. It does not require submission to them.

Accept, adapt or refuse

Every quest, role, instruction, invitation or intervention can be accepted, adapted or refused. This applies in a workshop, at a performance, on a quest and in an organisational programme.

An intelligent refusal can show more agency than automatic compliance. A sincere no is participation. Progress in the practice is never measured by obedience.

What we offer, and what we do not promise

We offer hospitality and care. We do not promise constant comfort. Uncertainty, awkwardness, unfamiliarity, emotional intensity, failed experiments and temporary disorientation can be part of trying something new.

Our responsibility is to preserve enough agency, coherence and responsiveness that you can orient yourself and make meaningful choices throughout.

Open World is a creative and developmental practice. It is not therapy or medical treatment and makes no therapeutic promises.

When the exercise becomes real

Sometimes an exercise stops feeling like an exercise. The frame may be fictional, but what is happening between people is real. Facilitators respond to the actual people, relationships and consequences in the room rather than insisting on the plan.

Recording, research and publication

Attending an event is not permission for anything else. These are asked about separately:

• being photographed or recorded,
• having your participation used as research material,
• having your image, words or story published,
• any use of material in training artificial intelligence.

You can agree to one and decline another. Private participant material is not published on this site.

Guided action and bodily sovereignty

In games where other people, an audience, an algorithm or chance propose what someone does, the person in the world keeps sovereignty over their own body and actions. They may accept, reinterpret, adapt or refuse. Guidance is not control.

Questions and concerns

If you want to ask about a particular event, or raise a concern about something that happened, message Atlas through Support.