In cities like Rotterdam, political disengagement is often driven by a lack of trust rather than a lack of interest. Many citizens feel disconnected from local politics because they rarely see tangible outcomes from political decisions. At the same time, political information is often fragmented, difficult to understand, and heavily focused on promises rather than proven actions.
As a result, voting feels like a low-reward activity: people are asked to invest time and attention without receiving clear, relevant, or actionable information in return.

Instead of persuading people that voting matters, the opportunity was to make political information more accessible, transparent, and engaging - therefore I created a podcast called: Rotterdam We Moeten Praten. The challenge was not simply to increase awareness, but to transform political participation from an obligation into an experience people genuinely wanted to engage with and share. To bridge the gap between citizens and local politics, I developed a tool that analyzed voting behavior across municipal motions and council decisions.

Rather than focusing on campaign promises, the platform translated complex political data into an easy-to-understand voting profile based on actual voting records.
Users could quickly discover which political parties most closely matched their views based on facts rather than rhetoric.

To increase participation and shareability, the experience was wrapped in a playful Super Mario-inspired environment, introducing elements of gamification without compromising the integrity of the information

By combining transparency, relevance, and entertainment, the project reframed political engagement from something people felt they should do into something they wanted to explore.

I had many responses of young people saying they never voted, but because of this tool they actually did.