"#DemocracyinAction: GRASSROOTS CULTURE, ARTS AND CULTURAL SPACES FOR POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND EXPRESSION ONLINE AND OFFLINE IN A RESILIENT EUROPE"

Project Information

Democracy in Action

Grant agreement ID: 101178843

DOI

10.3030/101178843

EC signature date 1 October 2024

Start date 1 February 2025

End date 31 January 2028

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 2 992 438,75

EU contribution

€ 2 992 438,25

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Democracy in Action (#DemocracyinAction: GRASSROOTS CULTURE, ARTS AND CULTURAL SPACES FOR POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND EXPRESSION ONLINE AND OFFLINE IN A RESILIENT EUROPE)

Reporting period: 2025-02-01 to 2026-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Democracy and the rule of law are cornerstones of the EU, but democracy has, in recent years, faced unprecedented challenges the world over. The publication of the EU’s Democracy Action Plan (2020) and the European Democracy Shield (2025) demonstrate growing recognition of the threats posed to democracy, with rising extremism, perception of distancing between institutions and citizens, election interference, (online) information manipulation and press interference identified as key challenges to overcome. In this context, Democracy in Action identifies solutions to counter threats to democracy through in-depth research into the value of arts and cultural grassroots organizations.

The UN recognizes the crucial role played by grassroots organizations for societal well-being, but there is so far no in-depth, large-scale study of the value of grassroots arts and culture for democracy, and Democracy in Action proposes to fill the gap with a focus on four areas of untapped potential: 1) nightivism (urban nighttime cultural life for political engagement); 2) women’s rights mobilization; 3) civic participation by racial and ethnic minorities through cultural expression; 4) youth political expression and civic education. Research is identifying their role and potential for strengthening democracy more broadly, in civic participation, democratic political expression, and participation, community well-being and social cohesion. In so doing, this project answers the following overarching questions: How do physical, virtual and immersive cultural spaces linked to grassroots nighttime activism, women’s rights, race and ethnic diversity and youth mediate current polarized political life and galvanize bottom-up agency for democratic values? How can the EU harness grassroots arts and cultural agency for inclusive, democratic political participation? Through intra and extra-European participatory research, Democracy in Action strengthens the EU’s global standing in responding to current challenges to democracy and supports its strategic orientation for more inclusive and resilient European societies.

Democracy in Action combines cutting edge research thanks to a broad consortium that includes academic researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Think Tanks, cultural advocacy organizations, in close collaboration with a network of grassroots organizations associated partners in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The project carries out research and knowledge exchange in 15 EU and non-EU countries, to assess the value of grassroots arts and cultural organizations for political democratic expression in democratic and non-democratic contexts and urban, semi-urban and rural areas. The project collaborates closely with two projects funded under the same call and that share a focus on culture and democracy: Larpocracy (Larping for democratic values) and Deliah (Democratic literary and humour). These collaborations operate at research and policy recommendation levels to maximize the potential of current research into the value of arts and culture for the well-being of democracy in our times.

Research is therefore founded on transdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, creative participatory research to provide cutting-edge insights on grassroots cultural advocacy - on social media, immersive virtual reality (metaverse) and offline - to inform EU culture-driven policy adaptations to better manage current threats to democracy.

Democracy in Action builds on and goes beyond traditional action research methodologies. We do so by forming an inclusive and superdiverse multi-stakeholder network, engaged in a continuous co-reflection on our research with the local communities. Our deep-ethnographic research into diverse digital, immersive and physical spaces involves: in-depth interviews, focus groups, and knowledge exchange workshops. Small-scale but highly impactful locally embedded associations form our stakeholders' network, which is closely involved in research and knowledge exchange. 

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first year, Democracy in Action focused on the mapping and data collection and experimentation phases of our research. Extensive literature review was the foundation for building a multi-dimensional theoretical framework of democracy as a process and practice of the everyday occurring within and beyond traditional political structures. Artistic and cultural expressions are understood in this context as forms of language and knowledges from which we can learn ways of being together and foster democratic values. This approach to democracy as a lived reality enacted, experienced, and fostered through arts and culture will be further developed and tested in the analysis phase.

Mapping of actors, physical and virtual spaces, and forms of democratic cultural engagement took as starting points grassroots cultural organisations from our stakeholder network and was developed through desk research, snowballing methods, online/in-person interviews, surveys, and in-person workshops. We have produced a Digital Cartography of the Afro-Cultural Movement in the Iberian Peninsula, which takes Lisbon Metropolitan Area as the paradigmatic case study of cultural activism in the context of race and ethnicity. This online map helps visualize the variety of forms of cultural and artistic practices for civic engagement. Surveys conducted to map youth and women’s rights organizations and their forms of fostering civic engagement yielded 392 replies from organizations operating in 41 different countries covered by the Council of Europe for youth and 123 entities including 78 organizations (55 formal and 23 informal) and 45 ephemeral initiatives or artistic projects for women’s rights. The mapping of night spaces’ democratic potential was focused on the interaction between the physical and the virtual in creating safe spaces and fostering democratic forms of engagement. We mapped strategies of social media used by night venues to disseminate their values and researched virtual night clubs to map immersive strategies to foster inclusive political expression.

Since co-creation and co-validation are at the core of Democracy in Action’s methodology, several Knowledge Exchange workshops were organized to involve artists, cultural producers, and other stakeholders in the fields of culture-based civic engagement already in the early stages of the project and create possibilities for sharing of experiences, strategies, best practices and challenges. Three-day long workshop “Democracy in Practice: a cultural gathering” in Torino (19-22.09.2025) including discussions, co-creation, food sharing, and performances is a prime example. Data collection was accompanied by a close collaboration with artists and cultural organizations in the preparation of planned creative experiments which will test identified strategies of fostering political expression and civic engagement and explore the possibilities and limitations in scaling up the democratic potential of arts and culture.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project is still in its early stages but the combination of theoretical inquiry, empirical research and co-creation approaches have already yielded new insights into diverse ways of how democracy is experienced, imagined and understood not as an abstract concept but as a form of living together by different groups within society (including marginalized groups). We identified that night spaces tend to promote democratic values without associating them explicitly with the notion of democracy. A similar tendency is observed among grassroots cultural organizations run by and for African and Afrodescendent in Portugal. Also, the creative experiments confirm the importance of lived experience and imagination for conceptualizing democracy. These preliminary results will be further explored to offer evidence-based recommendations and toolboxes on how to scale up the democratic potential of arts and culture.

An early result of the project emerged from the joint contribution of Democracy in Action and projects DELIAH and Larpocracy towards the call for evidence for the Democracy Shield. In our joint report, we provided concrete recommendations that include actionable strategies for ensuring higher participation in local, national and European funding schemes among local arts and cultural grassroots organizations that are the cornerstones of local communities as well as integrating Immersive Technologies into educational programs.