Problems and Purpose

In 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published its Global Assessment, warning that over one million species were at risk of extinction due to human activity. This report prompted reflection on the adequacy of existing political responses to ecological crisis, in which conventional environmental governance continued to treat non-human life primarily as a resource to be managed rather than as a participant in shared ecological systems.

These global concerns found a concrete local expression in Finsbury Park in North London, where Furtherfield — an arts organisation working at the intersection of art, digital technology, and civic engagement — was then based. The park, shared by three boroughs and used by a highly diverse local population, had become the site of ongoing conflict over the hosting of large-scale commercial music festivals. Community groups raised concerns about biodiversity and access to public space, while Haringey Council faced financial pressures linked to national austerity policies that increased reliance on commercial revenue streams, intensifying disputes over how the park should be used and for whose benefit.

Within this context, the Treaty asked a different question: what if the park were governed not only for human interests, but with other species recognised as political actors? Organisers describe Victorian park design as embedded in a broader historical logic of human dominance over land and living systems, in which flora and fauna were positioned as scenery, decoration, or resources. The Treaty sought to challenge this hierarchy through a fictional premise set in 2025: the species of Finsbury Park demand equal rights and call for a negotiated treaty of coexistence. Through Live Action Role Play (LARP), participants were assigned to represent specific species and invited to deliberate from those standpoints, with the practical aim of collaboratively designing an Interspecies Festival for the park. The project sought to "build empathy pathways to non-human lifeforms through play" and to rehearse alternative ways of imagining governance. It was conceived as a participatory arts initiative rather than a formal governance mechanism, functioning as a prefigurative practice: a way of temporarily enacting a political arrangement in which non-human beings are treated as members of a shared civic community.

Background History and Context

The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 was developed collaboratively by Furtherfield (London) and New Design Congress (Berlin), with the project listed as authored by "Furtherfield f. Cade Diehm," indicating joint conceptual development across two cultural programmes.

Furtherfield, founded in 1996, works at the intersection of art, digital technology, and civic engagement, emphasising decentralised cultural production and collaborative experimentation through its "Doing It With Others" (DIWO) approach. Since 2011, Furtherfield operated a gallery space within Finsbury Park, situating its work within a highly diverse North London community. New Design Congress, founded by Cade Diehm, is an international digital infrastructure research group based in Berlin, with a background spanning digital design, encryption technologies, information security research, and decentralised systems. The Treaty therefore emerged from a dual lineage of participatory art practice and critical infrastructure design.

Initially conceived as a one-day fictional treaty-signing event set in 2025, the project expanded into a multi-year participatory process following the COVID-19 pandemic. Online Assemblies, iterative prototyping, and in-park events unfolded between 2020 and 2023, with the fictional narrative situating the ratification of the Treaty in 2025. The project was conceptually shaped by emerging discourse on interspecies democracy and rights of nature, critiques of anthropocentrism embedded in Victorian park design, Nordic LARP traditions emphasising immersive collective world-building, and Furtherfield's DIWO methodology.

Organising, Supporting, and Funding Entities

The Treaty of Finsbury Park was led by Furtherfield, conceived by Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield) and Cade Diehm (New Design Congress), and developed collaboratively with artists, researchers, and participants over multiple years.

During its early stages, the project formed part of CreaTures (Creative Practices for Transformational Futures), a European Union–funded research project under the Horizon 2020 programme (Grant Agreement No. 870759), which documented the Treaty as one of its case studies. Additional financial support was provided by Arts Council England and Haringey Council. Ecological consultation was provided by Finsbury Park Ranger Ricard Zanoli, and CreaTures researchers monitored and documented the project through participant observation, interviews, reflective diaries, and surveys without participating in decision-making.

Participant Recruitment and Selection

Participation was open and voluntary. Public invitations were extended to park users, local residents, artists, researchers, and interested members of the public to join Interspecies Assemblies, festival activities, and related treaty events through a public call-to-action video, a dedicated project website, and event registration via Eventbrite. Early pilot sessions involved invited participants including artists and researchers; subsequent Assemblies were publicly advertised. For online Assemblies, additional rehearsal sessions were held in advance to support participants in attuning to their assigned species roles. After Assemblies, participants were invited to continue engagement via a Discord channel, and minutes were circulated including appendices documenting discussions.

Human participants did not attend as themselves. Instead, they were matched with one of seven designated "mentor species" through the fictional "Sentience Dial," a speculative narrative device presented as enabling communication between humans and other species, which structured the practical allocation of roles. Participants entered Assemblies exclusively in character, using digital face filters or physical masks to conceal their human identity.

Each mentor species functioned as a proxy representative for a broader ecological grouping within Finsbury Park:

1. Squirrels represent all small mammals (including rabbits, rats, and bats).
2. Dogs represent medium-sized mammals (including dogs, foxes, and deer).
3. Bees represent pollinators and airborne insects (including wasps and butterflies).
4. Canada Geese represent birds and waterfowl and are described as "international representatives."
5. London Plane Trees represent all trees and shrubs in the park.
6. Stag Beetles represent decomposers and underground ecologies (including insects, beetles, worms, and amphibians).
7. Grass represents plant communities and ground-level ecologies (including grasses, small plants, herbs, and fungi).

Prior to Assemblies, participants received species briefings written in the first-person plural ("we"), combining ecological information with narrative storytelling and describing habitat conditions, interspecies relationships, ecological roles, and vulnerabilities within Finsbury Park. Ecological grounding was supported by consultation with Finsbury Park Ranger Ricard Zanoli. Across the multi-year duration of the project, documentation refers to the involvement of "hundreds" of participants across pilot groups, online Assemblies, and larger public festival events.

Methods and Tools Used

The primary participatory method was Live Action Role Play (LARP), defined in project documentation as a form of collective fictional interaction in which participants adopt roles within a structured scenario and interact to pursue shared objectives. The project builds on Ruth Catlow's prior experimentation with "Live Art Action Research Role Play" (LAARRP), combining artistic practice, role play, and research inquiry.

The central participatory structure was the Interspecies Assembly: facilitated sessions in which participants deliberated while in role as their assigned species, discussing park habitats, ecological relationships, and elements of a proposed interspecies treaty. In person sessions included visits to specific habitats within Finsbury Park while participants remained in character. Following deliberation across multiple sessions, organisers synthesised Assembly input into three structured festival proposals, and participants selected one through an internal Assembly vote; procedural specifications for this vote are not comprehensively reported in available documentation. A separate public vote was then conducted using CultureStake, a quadratic voting application developed by Furtherfield, to determine which biodiversity habitat in the park would host the festival. Unlike the internal Assembly vote, this was open to the broader public, with votes cast from within Finsbury Park weighted more heavily than those made from outside it. Participants received "vibe credits" to distribute across proposals, expressing both preference and intensity of feeling; no personal data was retained by the application. These were therefore two distinct decision moments involving different groups and mechanisms.

To support sustained role play, participants used printed masks in person and digital face filters online. In person sessions included habitat walks during which participants visited different park areas while remaining in character, grounding deliberation in the physical environment. After role play, participants removed masks for facilitated debrief discussions, which CreaTures documentation identifies as a critical design component consistent with serious games methodology.

What Went On

Pilot (2021)

An initial pilot session was conducted in 2021 with approximately 18 participants, testing the near future fictional premise that species of Finsbury Park had demanded equal rights and were convening to negotiate interspecies cooperation. The session adopted diplomatic aesthetics inspired by treaty negotiations. Feedback identified technical onboarding challenges, tensions when social justice issues for humans and multispecies justice were placed in direct confrontation, and the need for clearer deliberation objectives. Crucially, some participants found it difficult to enact ecological conflict while maintaining interpersonal civility a tension between fictional representation and social norms that led organisers to shift from adversarial negotiation toward collaborative design of an Interspecies Festival as the central practical objective of subsequent Assemblies.

Assemblies (2021 2022)

All subsequent Assemblies followed a formalised entry protocol. Participants were introduced to the fictional Sentience Dial, and role embodiment was supported through digital animated face filters online and printed cardboard masks in person. In some sessions, an Interspecies Meditation preceded deliberation, inviting participants to imagine inhabiting the sensory world of their assigned species. Sessions typically lasted approximately three hours, followed by a 30 60 minute facilitated debrief.

Online Assemblies were conducted via Zoom. The first formal online Assembly (October 2021) involved seven invited guests plus organisers, with subsequent sessions opened through public calls. Sessions followed a structured format: ritual framing and entry into role, plenary orientation to ecological conditions, breakout room discussions, plenary reporting and negotiation, collective decision moments, and de roling and debrief. Within breakout rooms, participants discussed ecological pressures affecting their species, interspecies dependencies and conflicts, and possible activities for the Interspecies Festival. CreaTures documentation records onboarding improvements over time, including a redesigned webform and mini exercises to prompt immersion.

The first in person Assembly took place in January 2022 with eleven participants. Masked participants entered role within the Furtherfield Gallery before moving into Finsbury Park, visiting named habitats including the Old Forest, the New Forest, the Wildflower Meadows, and lake adjacent areas. In each location, participants discussed how their species related to the habitat and to other species present. Embodied interaction enabled experimentation with species specific behaviours; documentation notes instances of canine participants sniffing and circling, tree participants inviting tactile engagement, and participants using voice and posture to signal species identity.

Interspecies Festival (2023)

The selected proposal, determined through a two stage process in which Assembly participants voted internally on festival proposals and the broader public then used CultureStake quadratic voting to select the hosting habitat, culminated in the Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park in 2023. Approximately 25 to 30 structured participants took part per day, alongside additional spectators and park users. Participants appeared in role using masks and embodied performance. Activities included a multisensory "Mystery Tour," a Multispecies Choir performing ecological songs, Interspecies Day Care and Spa activities exploring decomposition and waste cycles, and habitat based encounters and facilitated interspecies exchanges. A docu fiction film documented aspects of the Festival and species perspectives.

Treaty Presentation and Public Pledging

During Festival and exhibition phases, a draft Treaty of interspecies cooperation was publicly presented and ceremonially signed within the fictional diplomatic framework. Members of the public were invited to make voluntary biodiversity pledges including removing litter during park visits, planting native species with the Finsbury Park Rewilding Group, observing insects for the UK Pollen Monitoring Scheme, learning about rights of nature frameworks, campaigning for species representation in park events, and creating artistic responses celebrating park species. No enforcement or monitoring mechanism is documented.

Influence, Outcomes, and Effects

Public documentation indicates that the Treaty of Finsbury Park generated cultural artefacts, participant reported experiential effects, iterative methodological development, and research dissemination.

CreaTures documentation records structured debrief reflections and interview data indicating that participants experienced perceptual and relational shifts during role play. Participants described experiencing unfamiliar embodied states — "this is a whole other way of being… suddenly I felt different" — and becoming more attentive to park ecologies during and after in person sessions: "I connected much more when we were actually out there… being much more conscious of surroundings." Others recognised how human park management practices affected other species: "conversations… started to generate a different understanding… how humans create that environment could be damaging for all the species." Some participants reported discomfort at insufficient ecological knowledge about their assigned species, which prompted independent follow up research: "I felt bad that I didn't know enough about trees… now I'm gonna go do some research." These are documented as self reported shifts; long term durability is not measured.

A documented process outcome with design consequences was the identification of tension between enacting ecological conflict and maintaining interpersonal civility. This led organisers to adjust framing from adversarial negotiation toward collaborative festival planning, a shift that shaped the project's subsequent development.

The Treaty produced documented refinement of participatory design techniques across multiple iterations, including redesign of onboarding processes, introduction of more immersive preparatory exercises, hybridisation of digital and physical mask systems, development of ethical principles for online role play, and formalisation of debrief protocols. CreaTures documentation characterises the project as a recursive experimental process in which feedback from each Assembly informed subsequent versions, with the development of LAARRP methods as a cumulative methodological outcome.

The Treaty was documented as part of the Horizon 2020 CreaTures programme, producing evaluation reports, academic discussion of interspecies role play, and public presentations at cultural and sustainability events, including COP related forums.

In interview, Ruth Catlow reflects that once Furtherfield was no longer resident in Finsbury Park, the team lacked capacity to mobilise participants collectively around their biodiversity pledges or track long term follow through. This is identified as a learning about the importance of place based continuity, community connectors, and structures for collective action beyond individual pledges.

At the time of reporting, available documentation does not indicate formal policy adoption within Haringey Council or longitudinal evidence of behavioural change linked to biodiversity pledges.

Analysis and Lessons Learned

The Treaty operationalised a proxy representation model in which human participants spoke "as and for" ecological groupings within a structured Assembly format. Rather than seeking legal personhood for ecosystems, it staged representation as a performative and relational practice, with authority emerging through collective recognition within the game world. CreaTures documentation indicates that participants often described a sense of obligation toward their species role, suggesting the design successfully shifted the perceived subject of politics beyond the human individual. While the Treaty held no formal authority, this sense of obligation points to how symbolic governance exercises can influence what participants perceive as politically thinkable — expanding democratic imagination even in the absence of institutional power.

A notable design feature is the use of embodied role play to reposition deliberation. Participants did not discuss biodiversity policy abstractly; they spoke from within an assigned ecological position, moving physically between deliberative and theatrical spaces. Documented participant reflections indicate perceptual shifts and heightened attentiveness to ecological interdependence. A structural tension also emerged: ecological systems contain real conflict — competition, predation, resource scarcity, yet human deliberative settings tend to prioritise civility and consensus. The organisers' decision to shift from adversarial negotiation toward collaborative festival design resolved this tension pragmatically, but the underlying challenge — how more than human democratic formats can hold ecological conflict without suppressing it — remained open.

The Treaty's iterative design is itself worth noting as a democratic practice. Rather than fixing a method and applying it, each Assembly generated participant feedback that directly shaped subsequent versions: onboarding was redesigned, framing was adjusted, facilitation protocols were refined. This recursive process, in which those who participated influenced how future participation would be structured — distributed a form of democratic agency over the design of the process itself, not only over its outputs.

The case's most demonstrable outcomes are perceptual, relational, and methodological. It also illustrates a structural condition common to time-limited, externally funded participatory projects: the capacity to sustain collective engagement beyond the formal process depends on place based presence and ongoing infrastructure that project funding cycles do not always support. Catlow identifies the team's loss of residency in Finsbury Park as the key contextual factor; with it went the local continuity needed to mobilise participants around their biodiversity pledges. This is less a design limitation than a resource and institutional one, and it points to a broader question for prefigurative democratic experiments about what conditions need to be in place, beyond the project itself, for experiential and imaginative engagement to translate into sustained civic action.

See Also

1. Zoöp (Zoöp Model for Organisational Governance) – Participedia case entry on institutionalised representation of non-human interests within cultural organisations.
2. River Don Living Stewardship Agreement – Participedia case entry on ecological co-governance and watershed stewardship.
3. Interspecies Council (Melbourne) – Participedia case entry on interspecies deliberative assemblies.
4. Confluence of European Water Bodies – Participedia case entry exploring more-than-human governance practices in water management.
5. Live Action Role Play (LARP) – Participedia method entry.

References

[1] Catlow, R. & Diehm, C. (2020). The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 (Concept Paper). Furtherfield / New Design Congress.

[2] CreaTures Project (Horizon 2020). (2023). D2.4 Review Report: Creative Practices for Transformational Futures. Grant Agreement No. 870759.

Available at: https://creatures-eu.org

[3] CreaTures Project. (2023). Treaty of Finsbury Park Extended Case Study Materials.

Available at: https://creatures-eu.org

[4] Catlow, R. (2026). Interview with Claudia Fernández de Córdoba Farini, 24 February 2026. Transcript provided by interviewee.

[5] Furtherfield. (2020–2023). The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 – Project Website and Event Documentation.

Available at: https://www.furtherfield.org

[6] “The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 – CreaTures.” Project overview page.

Available at: https://creatures-eu.org

[7] IPBES (2019). Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Available at: https://ipbes.net/global-assessment

[8] Frost, C. & Catlow, R. (Year). “Intimate Translations: Transforming the Urban Imagination.” [Academic publication referenced in project materials].

[9] NCACE (National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange). Garrett, A. (Year). Research and Curation across Art, Technology and Eco–Social Change.

[10] “Becoming a Stag Beetle! Living the Interspecies Treaty of Finsbury Park with Ruth Catlow.” ACCIDENTAL GOD.

External Links

Project Website

1. Furtherfield – Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025:
2. https://www.furtherfield.org

CreaTures Research Project

1. Creative Practices for Transformational Futures (Horizon 2020):
2. https://creatures-eu.org

Organising Institutions

1. Furtherfield (London, UK):
2. https://www.furtherfield.org
3. New Design Congress (Berlin):
4. https://newdesigncongress.org

Contextual Information

1. Finsbury Park (London Borough of Haringey):
2. https://www.haringey.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/parks/finsbury-park
3. Haringey Council Biodiversity Plan (if publicly available).

Participatory Methods Referenced

1. Live Action Role Play (LARP) overview resources.
2. Zoöp governance model (Netherlands): https://zoop.eu

Related Festival and Presentation Events

1. I AM Weekend Festival (2021)
2. openCOP (COP26 parallel event)

Notes

Illustration by Sajan Rai, Project by Ruth Catlow and Cade Diehm

Contributor Positionality Statement

This case entry was prepared by Claudia Fernandez de Cordoba (2026), founder of Living Imaginaries. Living Imaginaries is a social enterprise focused on reimagining how societies govern, relate, and live with more-than-humans. Working at the intersection of climate, biodiversity, food, health, and justice, it combines creative re-imagination with practical pathways for structural change. She is also a doctoral researcher at University College London, where her research examines more-than-human democratic innovation and biodiversity governance.

The contributor was not involved in designing, organising, or facilitating the Treaty of Finsbury Park. She conducted an interview with Ruth Catlow, Artistic Director of Furtherfield and co initiator of the Treaty, and attended a public event at which Catlow presented reflections and lessons from the LARP processes. Her engagement took place as an interviewer and audience participant and did not involve agenda setting, facilitation, or authority over outputs.

The case draws on publicly available project materials, CreaTures evaluation reports, interview material, and public presentations. Descriptive sections are grounded in documented materials and reported information. Interpretive analysis is confined to the Analysis section and informed by the contributor's broader research on nonhuman representation, relational governance, and democratic innovation.

This entry was developed as part of the project Developing a typology of emerging practices of nonhuman representation and participation, laying the groundwork for more than human democratic innovations, conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Deliberative Democracy, the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA), the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, Participedia, and the University of Westminster.