Participedia School 2024 Explores Democracy Across Borders

Participedia
3 min readDec 11, 2023

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June 10–15, 2024 | South Africa, Canada, Brazil | REGISTER HERE

The landscape of transnational public participation — the involvement of individuals or groups from multiple countries in political processes, decision-making, design, or advocacy that transcend national borders or issues — is rapidly changing. There are new innovations, theories, movements, policies, and successes happening around the world. The entangled challenges facing us extend beyond national boundaries, and so do their democratic solutions.

These new transnational processes, methods, and tools are seeing uptake, whether through global deliberative mini-publics and transnational deliberative organizational designs, to, digital infrastructures and methods of connected participation, research, engagement, and coalition building. Now, more than ever, we need to convene on, share, hear from those with experience, and acquire the skills to respond to, learn from, identify, research, and design transnational democratic innovations.

In partnership with Memorial University, the University of Western Cape, McMaster University, the Coady Institute, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Innovation for Policy Foundation, Mission Publiques, Democracy International, and a consortium of leading practitioners and scholars, join us for the next Participedia School on Transnational Democratic Innovations!

The event will take place in person on June 10–15, 2024 simultaneously at three decentralized locations: Memorial University (St. John’s, Canada), the University of Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa), and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte, Brazil). The Brazil experience will primarily take place in Spanish/Portuguese, and the three locations will be connected by unique virtual programming with live translation to maximize accessibility and impact. Using this globally decentralized approach, we hope to create a transnational ecosystem of learning that reflects the subject, connecting students and practitioners from around the world with each other and leading experts.

Participants can register to attend in person at all locations until spots are filled (50 spaces per campus). Limited scholarships are available on a ‘needs basis’ to cover registration, travel, and housing. All food and drink will be provided to attendees.

The Participedia School will offer:

  1. Accredited skills training: Support an exchange of learnings between practitioners, students, and scholars under a guided curriculum that leads to skill and field development recognized with a certificate of participation from the Coady Institute. University credit may be available at your home institution, contact us for more information.
  2. Interdisciplinary, intersectional, and international exchange: Provide opportunity for practitioners, students and scholars to engage with experiences, peoples, and ideas from around the world in a collaborative framework that will lead to new research questions, policy approaches, and partnerships.
  3. Knowledge sharing, transfer, and collaboration: Explore cutting-edge theories, research, and experience-informed learnings on transnational democratic innovations through problem solving and co-design.
  4. Knowledge synthesis and dissemination: Build awareness and knowledge amongst the staff of international organizations, diplomats, transnational civil society, activists and university students about the theory and practice of transnational democracy, synthesizing learnings in an open-access publication.

Where: Memorial University (MUN), St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada; University of Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa; Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

When: June 10–15, 2024

Who: Professionals whose work can be enhanced by deepening participation across borders and applying transnational participatory practices; civil society practitioners, advocates, and networks whose impact can be enhanced by strategic participation in, and the ability to create, design, and foster transnational democratic innovations; and higher education students interested in the theory and practice of democracy across borders.

For more information, fee structure and registration, please visit Participedia.net/ParticipediaSchool.

If you have any questions please contact info@participedia.net.

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Participedia

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