Category: Project

Network Democracy for a better city Barcelona 5th May
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

D-CENT’s Network Democracy for a better city event was organised in the 5th of May in Barcelona. The event explored how politics and political participation can be reinvented with concrete proposals to devolve greater control and power to citizens. We also presented network democracy tools and ideas for real participatory cities of the XXI century.

The programme (see in English here / Spanish here) included four panels and 24 speakers. The event attracted around 170 high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers together to debate.

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D-CENT event: Network democracy for a better city
PilotsProjectadmin

Exciting news! We have set the date and preliminary agenda for the next D-CENT event. On May 5th, we will be hosting a conference in Barcelona which dives into Network democracy for a better city. Our plan is to inspire a great number of high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers to debate the future of democratic City Governments.

Together we will explore new ways of strengthening citizens’ participation in the political process presenting already existing digital tools for a more participatory democracy. We will also discuss how future democratic city infrastructures and governments should look like.

>> LIVE STREAMING HERE

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Open Knowledge Finland discusses the D-CENT potential to change democratic participation
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Writers: Darryl Chamberlain & Francesca Bria (Nesta)

Representatives of the groups involved in D-CENT met in London to share their experiences. Jaakko Korhonen of Open Knowledge Foundation Finland talked about D-CENT’s potential.

What are you doing for D-CENT?

I’ve been doing research and development work and design work, and have colleagues that are working on participation, community management and more. There’s a network of people who are trying to find citizen-oriented democracy opportunities and there’s only a handful of organisations with the capability to accelerate this.

Maybe it comes from being in a small circle, but we keep ourselves away from the stuff that we’re not responsible for, so the decision-makers don’t get confused!

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D-CENT Interview with Citizens Foundation
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Editors: Darryl Chamberlain, Francesca Bria

Citizens foundation promotes e-democracy and participatory budgeting in Iceland. Interviewing Róbert Bjarnason.

What is the Citizens Foundation?

robert_0

We’re a non-profit that started after the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008, and we aim to increasing people’s influence in policy and government. All the banks went bankrupt, and there was a big decrease in trust in the political process and parliament. Parliament went from a 70-something percent trust rating down to six or seven per cent. It’s now recovered to 14%.

I started Iceland’s first internet service provider in 1993, and I thought we could use the internet to empower people and give them a stronger voice. Our Your Priorities tool was written into the original proposal, and I think D-CENT could really help us.

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Network parties in Spain: Interview with Labodemo, Podemos participation team
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Miguel Arana Catania_Labodemo_picture Nesta

Writers: Darryl Chamberlain & Francesca Bria (Nesta)

Representatives of the groups involved in D-CENT met in London to share their experiences. Miguel Arana Catania, of LaboDemo, which is working with Spanish political party Podemos, talked about how he sees the project. Miguel took part in the FutureFest panel hosted by D-CENT titled “Networks, Movements, and Parties: D-CENT and the challenges of the netera politics”.

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The emergence of the Internet-era citizen movements and political parties
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

The 19th century institutions of democracy, such as Parliaments, elections, parties, manifestos democratic assemblies are in great need of revival since they are out of synchronization with the 21st century technologies, norms and collective aspirations. Network parties are appearing in Europe: the Pirate Parties in Iceland, Germany and Sweden; and the Five Star Movement in Italy have pioneered Internet-based decision-making structures. Podemos in Spain, now leading in the national pools, is opening decisions up to large numbers of people through the Internet, involving citizens in shaping policy and sharing their expertise. Read more +

Join us at FutureFest
CurrencyProjectadmin

FutureFest is almost here! The upcoming weekend in London is full of immersive experiences, compelling performances and radical speakers to explore and challenge perceptions of the future. On Sunday 15th of March, D-CENT is hosting two panels: one on the future of political parties and another on the future of money. Join us, there’s still tickets for Sunday!

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Interview: Ansgar Koene and Yohko Hatada
Projectadmin

Ansgar Koene is the Research fellow from the University of Birmingham. He is a multi-disciplinary Research Scientist with experience in Computational Social Science, Robotics, Computational Neuroscience and human behaviour/perception experiments. Yohko Hatada is the Director and founder of Veram Vitam. She is Research Associate in the University of Birmingham, School of Psychology.

“I don’t think that public assemblies – as such – are going to dramatically change in the near future. The main change is going to be how the public can give their points of views towards these assemblies”, Koene says.

D-CENT interview: Ansgar Koene and Yohko Hatada from D-CENT on Vimeo.

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