The central role of Civic Arts in shaping democratic renewal emerges from various strands of work of the Transnational Democracy Programme since 2020, in particular through immersive democratic theatre.
The TDP explores new collaborations with actors interested in action-research using experimental design across different fields of expertise, from social sciences to psychology, through to arts. Through research, teaching, public engagement, plays and experimental assembly design, the Civic Arts dimension of the TDP has been developing structured playbooks. Its ambition is to strengthen the artistic, emotional and relational capacities of democratic life, while preserving deliberative rigour and institutional relevance. The location could not be more appropriate, as its position in Florence revives the humanist promise of Renaissance art and reconfigures it as a challenge for the future of civic imagination, where democracy can be practised not only as a procedure, but as a shared human experience.
Building on years of experimentation within the Democratic Odyssey project and other key moments for deepening the co-creation of knowledge, such as the EUI’s The State of the Union or the 50th Anniversary, Civic Arts explores how theatre, storytelling, music, ritual, visual arts, role-play, and collective decision-making can enrich citizens’ assemblies and other democratic innovations by making participation more embodied, imaginative and inclusive.
Civic Arts starts from the recognition that many democratic spaces remain too formal, verbal and exclusionary for the complexity of contemporary public life. Citizens’ assemblies and other democratic innovations have opened new routes for participation, yet deliberation can still privilege those most comfortable with institutional language, abstract arguments or public speaking as a whole. The civic arts dimension of the TDP responds to this challenge by widening the grammar of participation. They offer ways for people to enter public conversation through story, gesture, image, rhythm, ritual and collective decision-making, especially when words alone are insufficient.
In this sense, civic arts are not decorative additions to democracy. They are part and parcel of democratic infrastructure. They help create mutual recognition and trust; they make room for memory, imagination and disagreement; and they allow participants to connect personal experience to collective questions. Research on arts-based participation shows that such methods can strengthen self-expression, critical reflection and knowledge co-creation, while making marginalised perspectives more visible in policy debates. They also require careful design: participation must remain voluntary, accessible and ethically facilitated, with attention to vulnerability, cultural difference and power dynamics. For instance, the “Theatre of the oppressed” methodology provides a good example of how the arts can be mobilised to voice the unheard.
The Democratic Odyssey project has functioned as a living laboratory for this work. In Athens, Florence and beyond, civic arts have been integrated into a travelling Peoples’ Assembly for Europe. The pilot assembly showed how artistic facilitation can open a democratic process before formal deliberation begins, accompany participants through moments of conflict or uncertainty, and close an assembly with shared symbols that endure beyond the moments of in-person debates.
For instance, throughout the Athens moment, participatory theatre helped assembly members to move from spectators to protagonists. Playback Theatre invited citizens to share experiences of crisis and see them re-enacted on stage, creating empathy across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Collective visual practices, including the “European Tapestry”, gave space and shape to the assembly’s hopes and doubts. At the Pnyx, the “Weaving Our Assembly” ritual used coloured threads to materialise connection, critique, creativity and collaboration, turning the final walk of participants into a visible image of democratic interdependence.
Relevant material:
- An overview of the Civic Arts deployed throughout the Democratic Odyssey project
- A video trailer of Democratic Odyssey displaying civic arts in practice
- A thesis by Christian Recchia on “Civic arts in a transnational peoples' assembly: a 'democratic odyssey”
- A blog on a participatory moment during the EUI conference The State of the Union 2024 and the recording of the ‘Waiting for the Citizens’ play from the 2023 edition