Participatory and Empowering Community Dialogue Spaces: Exploring Local Meanings of Life Quality in a Danish Community-Health Partnership

This article examines how Dialogue Conferences (DCs) within the communityhealth project Welfare and Relations (WeARe), a partnership between two hospital institutions and a social housing organisation, contributed to locally grounded understandings of quality of life among older residents. Drawing on four Dialogue Conferences, 18 months of fieldwork, and interviews, we show how life quality emerged as a relational, situated accomplishment shaped through dialogical interaction. Residents emphasised green surroundings, mobility, safety, and small social infrastructures, while DCs enabled shared reflection and micro-practices such as coordinating outings, watching over neighbours, and initiating activities. We argue that DCs function as participatory spaces that support relational forms of empowerment through locally resonant socio-material practices.