400 Meters of Hope – Idea, Design & Development for re:publica’s Longest Manifesto

A white exhibition installation featuring vibrant, colorful graphics and text stands in a dark exhibition space. Several visitors are exploring the installation from different angles, while one of them is holding a mobile device. Yellow elements and cables complement the exhibition design.

Client

ZENTRALNORDEN

re:publica is Europe’s largest conference on the digital society—a place where the future isn’t just imagined, but created. The 2026 edition was held under the theme NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP.
We were there with an installation and posed a central question: How can collective hope be made visible? Instead of passive observation, visitors were invited to actively become part of something bigger—through a low-threshold, interactive installation that transforms many individual voices into a collective signal: that change is possible.

Services

Exhibition design
Concept development
Information architecture
User experience design
Development

Challenge

Political disillusionment, anxiety about the future, a sense of powerlessness: many people no longer know where to start. We believe that every person has a vision of how things could be better. The challenge: How do you create a space that moves people beyond the role of passive observers and gives them the feeling that their voice matters and that change is truly possible?

The installation was designed to do just that: make participation accessible, make hope visible, and even bring it to life. And at the same time, it functions as a robust, event-ready system with real-time moderation.

A roll of printed paper stands on a yellow pedestal in a modern exhibition. Colorful LED lights and exhibition elements can be seen in the blurred background.

White strips of paper with black text are scattered across a gray background, next to a white container with green and magenta elements. The strips appear to be part of an exhibition installation and bear excerpts from a long manifesto.

Exhibition view featuring colorful wall graphics in green, orange, pink, and blue, as well as typographic elements on the theme of technology. In the background on the left, an exhibition area with glowing neon objects and colored lights. On the right wall, a large manifesto installation featuring multicolored text blocks and letters arranged at an angle.

Our solution

The prompt “2030 will be awesome if …?” gave rise to the longest manifesto of hope: a continuous 400-meter-long receipt printout, collectively written by visitors to re:publica 2026. Every entry appeared immediately on the growing manifesto and simultaneously on 2030wirdgeil.de. Contributions from the fields of society, economy, environment, politics, and technology are color-coded. Individual thoughts come together to form a visible overall picture.

The visual language consistently draws on the aesthetics of receipts and runs through all touchpoints. The key visual translates this into a striking form—overlapping color stripes as an image of many voices coming together.