Theatre Devising as a Tool for Democracy

“Deliberation is really a moment where people are meeting each other and considering each other’s perspectives … they discuss issues that affect them all, and come to a shared decision. It’s really an empowering thought, because it’s about the belief that everybody is capable of understanding participating in taking those decisions.”

To help us understand what actually happens in the world of deliberative democracy, Ieva Česnulaitytė, founding head of research and learning at DemocracyNext, shared her thoughts at a recent Unrehearsed Futures conversation. DemocracyNext is an international organisation that seeks to shift political and legislative power to people by designing, embedding, and empowering Citizens’ Assemblies as defining institutions of a new paradigm of citizen-led democracy.

Responding to this season’s call of There Will Be A Time… Ieva shared show she would finish that sentence: “To me, there will be a time when… democracy will meet our expectations, and enable everyone to be a part of taking decisions that affect our lives, all the while showing us that everyone has value, capability and the trust of others to take those decisions.”

 

Hailing from Lithuania Ieva spoke about her motivation to explore citizen participation and citizen assemblies to build a democracy that justifies people’s expectations.

For her, a way to improve that is to address the main elements of the crisis of democracy, which is the lack of representation. At present several groups, minorities and others are everyday people are not necessarily included in the public decision-making process in a meaningful and ongoing way. One of the ways democracies around the world solve this is through elections. “That’s how we define democracy at the moment.”

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