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Democracy Lab

Democracy Lab is a two part workshop that asks students to engage with questions of democracy, and what it means to participate.

Updated May 28, 2025

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Irish Citizens’ Assembly: the Eighth Amendment

The Assembly met across five weekends to deliberate the country’s 8th Constitutional Amendment which defends the right to life. The Assembly’s recommendations by majority vote were essentially to repeal or replace the amendment.

Updated March 27, 2025

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Sortition

Sortition is the selection of candidates by lot, and was used in ancient Athenian democracy. When selecting participants for citizens' assemblies, the random selection is followed by stratification of candidates according to demographics like age, gender, location, and education.

Updated January 20, 2024

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Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion is an international, grassroots movement using protest tactics and non-violent civil disobedience to force political action on climate change and environmental degradation.

Updated July 25, 2022

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Yarra Valley Water Citizens' Jury

Yarra Valley Water is the water provider for nearly 2 million people in Melbourne. In 2017, they enlisted the help of a Citizens' Jury to help develop its five year price plan.

Updated April 19, 2022

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Vision 2030 - Living Darwin

The City of Darwin council convened a deliberative process with 80 Darwin residents to help draft a Strategic Plan for Darwin's future in 2030.

Updated April 12, 2022

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Better Suburbs Program for Canberra

Canberra has a growing population and the ACT government undertook a community consultation process as a pilot project for participatory budgeting in the city. Participants were asked to consider budgeting priorities for Canberra's suburbs.

Updated April 5, 2022

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Participatory Research on the Decommissioning of South African Social Services

A participatory research initiative on the decommissioning of the South African Social Services social grant pay points. The research will involve community engagement with the South African non-profit organisation, Black Sash.

Updated January 24, 2022

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Nachbarschaftschallenge (Neighborhood Challenge) during COVID-19

The Neighborhood Challenge encourages people to help out elderly and vulnerable neighbors during the COVID-19 by carrying out small services for them if they are unable to the leave their apartments.

Updated October 21, 2021

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Future Search

Future Search brings people from all walks of life into the same conversation – those with authority, resources, expertise, information and need. People tell stories about their past, present and desired future, discovering common ground and then making concrete action plans.

Updated July 28, 2021

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Citizens’ Assembly

A Citizens' Assembly is a body of citizens who come together to deliberate on a given issue and provide a set of recommendations, options, or a collective decision to the convening body.

Updated April 29, 2021

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The Irish Citizens' Assembly

Established in 2016, the Citizens' Assembly is a permanent, deliberative body of 100 randomly selected citizens who collect public opinion, debate, and provide recommendations on the topics outlined in its founding documents and, later, by members of parliament and the public.

Updated March 15, 2021

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Community Committees

Community committees are representative bodies established as intermediaries between government and the residents of a particular area.

Updated February 21, 2021

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Queering the Map

Queering the Map is a community-generated mapping project that geo-locates queer moments, memories and histories in both cyber and physical space.

Updated January 16, 2021

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Open Access

Open access is a publishing and distribution model that makes scholarly research literature—much of which is funded by taxpayers around the world—freely available to the public online, without restrictions.

Updated December 24, 2020

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Participatory Grantmaking

Participatory grantmaking is a kind of participatory philanthropy that narrows the focus to decision-making. Participatory grantmaking distinguishes itself by moving decisions about money—and therefore power—to the people most affected by the issues donors are trying to address.

Updated November 18, 2020

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ICT Facilitation of Citizen Participation, Open Government, and Public Service Delivery in Madrid

An initiative to make Madrid a 'Smart City': one where citizens are digitally connected with each other, with elected officials, and with public services through various ICT platforms and devices. Goals include increased democratic participation and government responsiveness.

Updated November 15, 2020

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Decommissioning South African Social Services: Participatory Field Research in Delft

A study of the Delft township as part of a participatory research initiative on the decommissioning of the South African Social Services social grant paypoints finds that elderly Delft recipients experienced greater costs and indignities, although less so than in rural areas.

Updated September 22, 2020

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Mass Singing during the COVID-19 Pandemic

During lockdowns in many countries affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, people began singing from their windows or harmonizing online together in an effort to maintain morale and social connections.

Updated August 19, 2020

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City of Kingston Customer Service Charter

The local government of Kingston in the Australian state of Victoria undertook an engagement process to help refresh their customer service charter. The process involved two deliberative panels: one of community members and one made up of council staff. The aim was to co-design a new customer service charter.

Updated August 4, 2020