Appreciative · Regenerative · Connective
What if our communities and institutions became our field — and we explored together how to nurture them? Spaces for leaders and changemakers working at the edges of democratic renewal — from different vantage points, co-creating pathways forward.
Democracy is alive in movements
and communities worldwide.
This is a field of practice for leaders, changemakers, and systems designers working toward democratic renewal. Each gathering, event, and project is shaped by the people in the room and the questions alive in that moment.
Inspired bySlowing down
Space to share what is really happening — in our work, in ourselves, in the systems we are part of.
Learning as nature
Designed for renewal, reconnection, and regeneration — returning to what is already alive.
Visioning together
Pathways that emerge from both individual and collective imagination and presence.
Being human
Gatherings of humans, bringing whatever living questions are present.
Going beyond sectors
Weaving perspectives from across civic, institutional, and grassroots worlds into a larger view.
Growing fields
Each space is part of a larger, ongoing field — in relationships, in work, in what participants carry forward.
Some of the forces acting on democratic life — from the generative source at the top, through renewal and structure, to the pressures acting from below. A partial view to explore the whole.
The relational foundations of democracy are the conditions that make participation feel possible and worth doing — a capacity to hold multiple perspectives, an honouring of both human and more-than-human life, a felt sense of belonging to the demos, the quality of listening in a room, shared spaces where paradox and disagreement become generative, places for people to be human together — to collaborate, coordinate, support and celebrate what is working.
A living, growing map making more visible organisations and projects working on living democracy from across vantage points.
Organisations whose primary work is the quality of how people gather — creating conditions for genuine encounter, collective thinking, and transformation.
Global community of practitioners using participatory and dialogic methods — World Café, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry. One of the most developed networks for making democratic spaces genuinely come alive.
Home of Theory U — leading collective change from a place of inner stillness and deep listening. Widely used in governance, public sector, and civic contexts across Europe and globally.
Arnold Mindell's approach to facilitating conflict, power, and deep listening. Deep Democracy as practice — the wisdom a group needs lives in its margins, its minority voices, its most uncomfortable edges.
Practitioners exploring what becomes possible when groups move into genuine collective awareness — bridging facilitation, contemplative practice, and emergent social field work.
Facilitation, hosting, and mentoring for regenerative leadership and systems change. Works globally to create alive spaces where genuine transformation can emerge.
Vienna-based philanthropic foundation gathering pioneers across education, climate, gender justice, food, and democracy. Distinctive for the quality of how it convenes — slow, relational, and genuinely alive.
Organisations advancing citizens' assemblies and participatory processes — where ordinary people come together to deliberate on hard questions with wisdom and care.
European network supporting the design, facilitation, and institutionalisation of high-quality deliberate processes. One of the few organisations tracking both the process and the practitioner.
Has done more than almost any other organisation to develop and share the methodology of citizens' juries and sortition. The benchmark for deliberate practice quality.
Global hub for participatory democracy — resources, case studies, and a practitioner network connecting people working on democratic innovation across contexts.
Makes the case that randomly selected citizens are more genuinely representative than elected politicians — and builds the infrastructure to demonstrate it.
Belgian platform for democratic innovation, co-founded by David Van Reybrouck. Pioneered large-scale citizens' assemblies and has been a model for deliberate practice across Europe.
Spanish organisation running citizens' assemblies and training facilitators in participatory process.
Works on the quality of political processes themselves — attending to how things are decided as much as what is decided. Brings process intelligence and facilitation thinking into the heart of political institutions.
Organisations redesigning the institutional infrastructure of democratic life — asking what structures could genuinely hold collective wisdom, care, and long-term thinking.
Designs institutional infrastructure for a more equitable, caring, and sustainable future. Their Radicle Civics portfolio asks how civic structures can be redesigned around interdependence and deep democracy.
Global network of social entrepreneurs working at the edge of civic renewal, democratic innovation, and systems change.
Long-running institution consistently asking what civic life, collective intelligence, and democratic participation could look like. Significant work on trust, belonging, and regenerative social change.
Works on transformative systems change and increasingly the democratic questions embedded in transition — who decides, who is heard, who belongs to the future.
Equips communities affected by extractive industries with scientific and legal tools to defend their democratic rights over their own land. Democracy as self-determination from the ground up.
2025 institutional framework attempting to reframe democracy as a living, participatory practice from within European governance.
Funders and philanthropic organisations that resource the field with solidarity, trust, and genuine relationship alongside grants.
Funds radical grassroots activists and movements across Europe with trust, flexibility, and genuine solidarity. Among the closest things to a living democracy funder in Europe.
Europe's only pooled philanthropic fund dedicated solely to democratic space — supporting civil society, independent media, and tech accountability.
Global foundation working on civic empowerment and information integrity. Brings depth to questions of what democratic participation actually requires of people and systems.
One of Europe's most thoughtful private foundations, working on the conditions for healthy civic and democratic life across multiple programme areas.
Philanthropic practice working on the regenerative edge of giving — relational, long-term, and attentive to what the field actually needs rather than what is easy to measure.
A growing community of European foundations working on democracy — peer exchange, collaborative action, and a shared philanthropic agenda.
Organisations doing the structural work — reshaping how political and legal institutions operate, and who they genuinely serve.
Uses strategic litigation to challenge the structures that exclude — law as a democratic tool for those formal democracy fails. Intersectional, principled, and genuinely radical in method.
Makes EU decision-making more transparent and accessible to civil society. Works on the formal architecture of democratic participation in Brussels.
Works to diversify who runs for political office in Germany — democratic renewal from inside the electoral system, changing the composition of power at source.
Electoral reform and political culture change in the UK. Working on the structural conditions for a politics that serves people.
Climate litigation and legal reform holding governments and corporations accountable for democratic climate commitments.
Slovak organisation working on democratic discourse and disinformation in one of Europe's most contested civic environments.
Organisations working where democratic life lives first — in communities, movements, and the spaces formal politics rarely reaches.
Connects artists and activists at the intersection of culture, democracy, and social change. Holds the creative dimension of democratic renewal — generative, embodied, and often the most alive.
Thousands of local groups building community resilience and agency from the ground up. One of the largest living experiments in democratic self-organisation at neighbourhood scale.
Building civic coalitions and grassroots organising across Central and Eastern Europe — where civic space is most pressured and the work most urgent.
Working with Romania's most marginalised communities on human rights and civic participation. Democracy practised from the edges in.
Founded on Ubuntu philosophy — the understanding that we are human through relationship. Works on civic empowerment, belonging, and community-led democratic practice with a pan-African lens.
Organisations working on the cultural foundations democratic life requires — the stories we tell about who we are, what we owe each other, and who belongs.
Documentary storytelling for social change and civic engagement. Uses film and narrative to create the conditions for democratic empathy, collective understanding, and public imagination.
A digital repository of African ancestral wisdom tales rooted in Ubuntu philosophy — beginning from the premise that democratic belonging requires seeing yourself and others as fully human.
adrienne maree brown's application of living systems principles to social justice and movement work. The principle that transformation happens at the scale of relationship carries a profoundly democratic sensibility.
Works on climate communication and democratic engagement — building the public conditions for meaningful collective action, where the democratic and the ecological meet.
This is a living, growing map, making more visible organisations and projects that are working on living democracy from across vantage points.
The democracy field is incredibly and extensively mapped — in several directions. These maps often share a common orientation: they track the health of institutions, the funding flows, the scale of deliberate processes, the extent of civic space. They are diagnostically excellent. They chart what is at stake and what is being defended. Do we also need to map what is current and alive — and if so, how?
What could be possible from here is a map of the field through a living systems lens: tracking those working in ways that are specifically relational, cross-sector bridges, inner-outer integrated and regenerative.
Interested in joining a gathering, nominating an organisation, or exploring partnership?
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