Butterfly Island Samsø - a democratic movement with reverse municipal participation

The project is about butterflies and municipal participation. The Butterfly Island is a grassroots movement with 761 members and 69 hectares of land. The movement enables people to develop skills, a sense of belonging and hands on action. Now Samsø Municipality wants to join and transform public areas into biodiversity areas too. In this project we aim to explore how the movement can engage the municipality and whether the members will be able to influence the public planning of the green transition. Two people (a soil-and-butterfly nerd and a community-engagement nerd) will, together with the members, safeguard the freedom of the movement, and, through volunteering and a small-scale test of citizenship salary, establish four butterfly areas: on municipal land, at a falconry centre, in a community forest and in a public space in front of Visit Samsø. At campfire meetings, people will exchange knowledge and experience and co-create a new form of collaboration: municipal participation.