The Ant Referendum
This article is about a social experiment held at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Hague.
What sparked the idea
The Ant Project in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Art is good for many different opinions. When a KABK student posted a photo of the courtyard before it was full on the Facebook page of the Academy, the post got many likes and reactions, something quite unusual for messages on this particular Facebook page.
The reactions that were posted under the photo initiated that there was a lot of discontent about the Ant Project and the “mess” in the courtyard. People wanted their old, familiar courtyard back. But were these hate-reactions a good representation of the KABK-society? And were people really unsatisfied, or did they just want to be funny online?
I decided to give the students and lecturers of KABK the opportunity to actually use their opinion, and vote, in a Referendum. First, I did research on the visual aspects of usual Referenda and other political matters. I looked at posters, ballot boxes and voting tickets.
As a social experiment, I created a Referendum “Do you want the Ant Village to stay”. I made a ballot box, voting tickets and a poster campaign for both sides; in favor of and against the Ant Village. I announced the voting day on Facebook and also hung posters around the Academy. I hoped to get a lot of reactions and voters.
I very soon got what I hoped for. Not only online, but also offline my actions caused quite some reactions. Online people reacted to the post, often with funny lines. In real life the reactions were more serious though. Posters I put up only minutes ago were immediately torn off, especially the posters that wanted the village to go.
The voting day
April 26th was not only the opening of the Village, it was also the day that anyone in the school could influence its future. From 10:00 until 19:00, the voting office was opened. Located in the canteen next to the balcony looking over the Ant Village, many people ran into it and decided to vote as well.
I heard many interesting things from the voters and other people who decided not to vote. I also learned some new things about how I could make everything even clearer and work better.
During the day, there wasn’t a side that clearly had more voters, so for me the outcome was also a surprise until the final moment.
The counting of the votes
On the 28th of April I counted the votes.
In total, 206 people had voted. 117 of them had voted yes and wanted the village to stay. This made up 56,79 percent of the votes and thereby won the Referendum. The no-voters were with 74, good for 35,92 percent of the votes. The remaining 7,28 percent (15 votes) were invalid. These people either voted blank, in the middle, both choices or made a creative drawing.
The conclusion
It was interesting to see that even though the original Facebook post seemed to convince otherwise, the majority of the people who voted were in favor of the Ant Village and wanted it to stay.
If we can assume that the people who liked the original Facebook post (177 likes) were all against the Ant Village, where did their votes go? Did these people not vote? Did they change their mind? And what did their “like” actually mean?
For me it was very interesting to see how a Referendum could work (on a smaller scale). On forehand I was curious if it could compare to the Referendum about Ukraine, held on the 6th of April. With this event fresh in the minds of the voters, would people change their voting behavior?
Another thing I found striking, was that not a lot of people actually asked what they were really voting for. Only a few people asked what would happen with the outcome, and they were satisfied with just a vague answer. People also suggested alternatives for the “yes” or “no” they were offered, for instance to only keep parts of the Ant Village (the bar).
I don’t think I’m really able to conclude a lot from the results I got, but I think it was nice to see relatively quite some people took the effort to vote.
