There is a new movement of grassroots democratic effort bubbling up across the UK, of which Humanity Project is a part. To help and strengthen this effort, between September and December 2024, we facilitated a series of critical dialogues around deliberative and participatory democracy.
These dialogues were all about answering the question: “what makes a good democracy?”
If we can’t answer that – if we don’t know what it looks like, how it works best for people, and how it operates – then we won’t be able to properly change the political culture we have for a better one, will we?
Pretty much everyone we know agrees that our current political system doesn’t work any more. Nearly 8 in 10 people in Britain (79%) believe the system of governing Britain could be improved ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’. That’s up 18% since just 2020. Thankfully, most people want radical but not reckless change.
So what makes for a ‘good’ democracy? How can people take part in a more respectful, open, effective political culture, beyond voting? What does ‘good participation’ look like? If we’re going to renovate or upgrade democracy, do we have a better blueprint?
We believe one answer may lie in assemblies: where everyday people gather, sometimes by choice, other times by ‘democratic lottery’ to learn about and deliberate on subjects that matter to us where we live.
These five plain-speaking dialogues with practitioners, organisers and experts, really got stuck into assemblies: how they work, what some of the key things to keep in mind are, and how they can make democracy a good, effective, respectful experience for people.
What we’re after are ways to make politics a place where we can take back our power and agency to act on the things that matter to us, where we live. No one believes Business-As-Usual is good enough any more. Everyone knows that a country in which the superrich keep getting richer while the rest of us suffer, is not a fair place to live, and it has to stop (even some millionaires say so!).
We did this in collaboration with our close partner Absurd Intelligence, who are bringing much needed narrative leadership to the multifaceted intersecting shitshow of climate and democratic collapse.
Together we hosted and recorded a series of conversations exploring the nuances, thorny issues and detail of assemblies as sites of political and relational activity and civic transformation. We know creating new governance structures is both necessary for the 21st century, and of course not an easy task. We may be disillusioned with what we have, but who dares to suggest a new way, which may also be imperfect, challenging, and always in need of development? What we do know is that the deliberative wave that has been taking place for decades has learnt many lessons already and often shows itself to be way ahead of the systems we keep on using in Westminster. This set of dialogues looked at the nuances and debates that the experts in the field are grappling with.
Magic happens when we convene a room full of people who aren’t usually together, but need to be. Bringing experts in democratic innovation, artists and makers, and grassroots organisers closer together is crucial to the work we need to do in making change happen.
A huge thanks to everyone who took part.
But especially to our question-holders:
- Professor Graham Smith: How can we make the relationship between bottom-up people’s assemblies and sortition assemblies work well, so that it’s an interesting, self-reinforcing, generative and productive relationship?
- Claire Mellier, Iswe and Global Citizens’ Assembly: Is there really anything neutral about an assembly, or a facilitator?
- Rich Wilson, Iswe and Global Citizens’ Assembly: Who sets the agenda, and how does choosing the question “set the frame” for assemblies?
- Lee Jasper, Black community leader and former deputy mayor of London: How can assemblies be more radically anti-racist than they have been so far?
- Jon Alexander, author of Citizens: What’s the bigger implementation plan? And how do we make the outputs of any national-level assembly unignorable?
A lot of us are excited by the bringing of truth, love and humanity into political organising and decision-making. This was evident at a conference on global assemblies co-hosted by Iswe at Oxford University on Thursday 18th July, 2024 that Clare Farrell spoke at, the same day our friends from Just Stop Oil were outrageously imprisoned for a total of 21 years for raising the alarm on the climate crisis.
Yet we know there are lots of nuanced challenges around deliberative democratic practices, and we want to be thorough in our interrogation of the field and ideas as we develop how we tell the story of assemblies through cultural activation, be they events such as The Fête of Britain or in song, writing, art, theatre, football or faith.
Who is Humanity Project?
Humanity Project is a group of people who have had success in many fields, from social and environmental movements to politics, from anti-racism campaigning to grassroots community organising, and who know that we need to work together across our various fields and communities to be successful. Humanity Project is a movement that crosses political polarisations and centres on upgrading democracy itself. Humanity Project is not orientated in any party political way. Instead, it sees this shift in how decisions are made as a fundamental improvement for our nation and communities.
Who is Absurd Intelligence?
Founded by the creative brains behind Extinction Rebellion, Absurd Intelligence occupies a crucial strategic position in the intersectional movement for change. Convening and catalysing an unrivalled network of world-class interdisciplinary experts, we are driving much-needed Narrative and Movement Leadership. Extinction Rebellion transformed the climate space, spreading to 100+ countries in 18 months (“The most successful start-up in history” — Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter). But we know that we cannot address the environmental crisis without also tackling the way our world makes decisions. What we did to disrupt and advance the narrative around climate, we now need to do for democracy.
Thank you to all of our participants
Alex Lockwood
Anwar Akthar
Carne Ross
Claire Mellier
Clare Farrell
David Bent
Deborah Field-Pellew
Diane Beddoes
Dr Floyd Millen
Dr Rosa Zubizarreta
Ed Gillespie
Elena Moses
Eva Schonveld
Gospel Obeke
Granaz Baloch
Helen Goulden
James Robertson
Jamie Kelsey Fry
Janosch Pfeffer
Jenn Reid
Jeremy Till
Jessica Edwards
Jon Alexander
Josh Knowles
Josie Moon
Justin Kenrick
Kathie Conn
Lachlan Ayles
Lee Jasper
Liam Killeen
Liz Goold
Lucy Reid
Manfred Hellrigi
Mara Livermore
Marit Hammond
Martin Rausch
Martin Wroe
Mary Nassr
Michael DaCosta Babb
Mike Eccles
Mirian Levin
Molly May
Moussa Sylla
Myghal
Nick Anim
Professor Oliver Escobar
Patricia Garcia
Paul Ewen
Perry Walker
Pete Bryant
Phoebe Reith
Professor Graham Smith
Reema Patel
Rich Wilson
Robbie Stamp
Rossana Massuelo
Sarah Castell
Siddi Mujabah
Stephanie Draper
Stephen Bennett
Professor Stephen Elstub
Steve Conlon
Susan Richie
Timi Okuwa
Tom Lord
Yago Bermejo