We're off! 🚀
We would like to start this with a huge THANK YOU.
If you didn't have the chance to join us last night, never fear! You can watch the recording of the webinar here.
Thank you to our speakers Hélène Landemore, Art O'Leary, Brenda Ogembo, and David Van Reybrouck, as well as our moderator Panthea Lee for their inspiring interventions. Thanks to our DemNext team for their hard work these last few months.
We're grateful to everyone who hung in there yesterday while Zoom crashed, who joined us despite our late start, and who filled the chat with energy and momentum. It was energising to see hundreds of people join us from all over the world!
There was an incredible amount of activity and so much positive energy in the chat and Q&A. There were so many questions and not enough time to address them all, so we will answer the Q&A questions in our forthcoming newsletter. A big thanks to everyone who watched the livestream too.
Finally, thank you to everyone who has supported the movement and who has worked to build on the ever-growing deliberative wave. To quote DemNext founder Claudia Chwalisz:
"We’re not starting from scratch with these ideas, we’re building on a growing wave of over 600 examples of citizens’ assemblies around the world where everyday people selected by lottery have proven time and time again that we are able to come together across diversity, grapple with complexity, listen to one another, and to decide together.
In the past few decades, everyday people have been finding original and thoughtful solutions to problems that politicians have been stuck on: climate change in the UK, France and elsewhere; constitutional changes in Mongolia; tech platform regulation in Canada; and in Ireland, overcoming the divisions on abortion and same sex marriage.
Permanent Citizens’ Assemblies already exist and have been tested in Paris, Bogota, Toronto, Ostbelgien, and elsewhere.
At a time when so many feel disillusioned with politics, feel powerless to influence change, and are frustrated with the state of our countries and the world, these examples give me hope and inspiration that we could be building a genuinely democratic system, founded on the principes of citizen participation, representation by lot, and deliberation.
I think it’s more important than ever that we don’t give in to fatalism and that we channel our energy into enabling change. We’re not limited to trying to save our broken electoral politics or falling into autocracy.
Another democratic future is possible; DemocracyNext is all of us, working to make it a reality"
You can also read Claudia's opening narrative by clicking here 👇
Our new webpage went live yesterday as well - in English, French, and Spanish. It features some more information about what we do, our team, and our advisory board members.
Our press release is also available in English, French, and Spanish.
While our full website with more details about how we work and our projects is being prepared, we wanted to share with you some initial information about our current projects.
President Biden's Summit for Democracy. DemocracyNext is part of the Cohort on Deliberative Democracy and Citizens' Assemblies that is sponsored by the Irish government and the European Commission. DemNext is leading two working groups on Central and Eastern Europe, and on establishing a Global What Works Centre for Deliberative Democracy.
Work Programme on Democratising Government Institutions.DemocracyNext is partnering with the European University Institute, supported by the Berggruen Institute, for a project on designing a System of Permanent EU Citizens’ Assemblies. We are also setting up a project to develop propositions for a new system of urban and city planning decisions.
Work Programme on Democratising the Governance of Economic Institutions. This programme has three pillars - on work, investment, and money. We are collaborating on this with Mike McCarthy, Isabelle Ferreras (Democratizing work), Juha Leppanen (Demos Helsinki).
Work Programme on Democratising Cultural Institutions. We are collaborating with Design & Democracy (Vera Sacchetti and Amelie Klein) on partnerships with two museums who will be setting up Citizens' Panels on democratising museums, as well as an exhibition on Redesigning Democracy.
Developing New Measures for the Next Democratic Paradigm: Led by our strategic advisor Jon Alexander, in collaboration with the New Citizenship Project and the Democracy & Culture Foundation, we are working to develop a Citizens Confidence Index. Read more about the idea here.
We heard your demands for a space so that the DemNext Community can come together, meet each other, and collaborate. We're working on this to find the best way to bring you all together, so stay in touch to receive more information about this.
We are also open to exploring new projects and collaborations, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us!
Some extra reading for the road! Take a look at Hélène and Claudia's article in Le Monde on the vote against the new Chilean Constitution by the country's people and the lessons to learn from it. Click below to read the thread summarising the piece in English👇