Democracy Pioneers

Deadline: 2020-01-31
Award: £100,000
Open to: UK organizations*

Much of our democratic and participatory processes have not kept apace with the rapidly changing reality and expectations of the public. We are limited by decades - if not centuries - of tradition and top down paternalistic design that has defined the engagement of citizens.

While these problems might seem overwhelming, there are reasons to be hopeful. Worldwide, innovations are emerging which are reshaping civic participation and our experience of everyday democracy. This is visible through formal democratic processes such as vTaiwan, a consultation process designed to crowdsource opinions and create large-scale deliberation on complex policy-issues; or Madame Mayor, I have an idea: an online participatory budgeting exercise in Paris, where local residents can campaign and debate how the city budget is spent; as well as informal spheres of everyday life in our communities, such as the Kotti & Co protest in Berlin against the threat of drastic rent increases. Organisations and communities are demonstrating what’s possible when we come together to exercise our civic rights.