June 5, 2025
By Kameliya Tomova

Warming up for the NECE Festival

This year’s NECE Festival theme is HOPE. To warm-up, on April 3rd 2025, a roomful of civic educators and civil society leaders gathered in Oslo for a one-day “prep lab”. Below are the headline insights we are carrying forward.

Reclaiming citizenship as a verb

At the opening of the lab, keynote speaker and CITIZENS author Jon Alexander made the case that the most urgent shift we need today is to reclaim citizenship as a verb – not a fixed legal status that divides “us” from “them”, but a dynamic, collective practice. He placed this idea within a broader narrative of three societal “stories” that shape how we relate to power and one another.

The consumer story, now faltering, encourages individuals to maximise personal gain – a mindset ill-equipped to address today’s crises of loneliness, inequality and ecological collapse. The subject story, rooted in obedience to a ruling elite, is re-emerging in the rise of strong-man politics. In contrast, the citizen story offers a hopeful alternative: a vision of society in which everyone contributes ideas, energy and resources to reimagine institutions and meet shared challenges together.

Lessons from Taiwan

To illustrate this in practice, Jon Alexander turned to Taiwan’s remarkable democratic transformation over the past decade. He highlighted the role of the hacker collective “g0v” (pronounced “gov-zero”), which reimagined civic tech by building open-source tools that made government data more accessible. He spoke of a parliament that opened its doors to protesters, and of Audrey Tang – a digital minister and former civic hacker – who helped design Taiwan’s widely praised COVID-19 response, guided by the principles of being fast, fun, and fair.

The takeaway, Jon Alexander argued, is that leadership today must move beyond command-and-control or customer service models. Instead, it should focus on facilitating people’s creativity. Civic education, in turn, should equip individuals not just to understand how systems work, but to actively participate in (re)shaping them – to learn, quite literally, how to citizen.

© Werner Anderson

Hope as a strategic resource

Jon Alexander’s keynote gave way to a wide-ranging discussion with distinguished policy fellow Fredrik Wesslau, media researcher Jessica Robinson, strategic-communications specialist Kristin Dannevig, and Alexander himself, probing the texture of hope in times when liberal democracy feels increasingly fragile. Instead of treating hope as wishful thinking, the panel examined it as a practical tool that helps societies plan and work toward a better future.

The panellists reflected on the rise of fear-based politics since the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election, noting how anxiety and polarisation have reshaped public discourse. Yet, they argued, civic educators must continue to guide people away from fatalism and towards a sense of agency – a belief that their voices and actions still make a difference. Hope, in this view, is not a luxury or escape; it is possibility made tangible.

Rewriting the narrative

In communication terms that means rewriting the usual script. Campaigns that dwell on crisis imagery, “chaos” and looming threats merely stimulate the brain’s fight or flight reflex; what wins hearts is a balanced narrative that shows the problem and the pathway out. A simple five-shift model was introduced – moving from fear to hope, from problem to solution, from against to for, from threat to opportunity, and from abstract victims to human connection and vivid, emotionally resonant stories. The panel stressed that the far right is already fluent in this grammar, folding belonging and purpose into every meme. What this means for progressive actors is that they must learn to signal agency with equal conviction.

Agency in the digital space

The discussion also turned to the role of digital platforms in shaping public imagination. Contrary to popular belief, echo chambers are not as sealed as they seem; users often encounter views that challenge their own. What keeps them engaged is not agreement, but agency – the feeling that a post, retweet or reply might have real-world impact.

Some conspiracy movements use this dynamic effectively. They offer newcomers small, achievable actions – a “first task” that confirms their contribution matters. The lesson for civic educators? Don’t treat audiences as passive recipients or consumers. Instead, invite them to co-create. Highlight the clean-ups after protests, the community energy projects, the small yet powerful gestures of everyday solidarity. What we pay attention to, grows.

Europe’s toughest question

The conversation ended on a more sobering note – Europe’s changing security landscape. The post-Cold War formula of cheap American protection, Russian gas and Chinese manufacturing is no longer reliable. With the United States stepping back and Russia posing a renewed threat, increased defence spending now seems inevitable.

Yet the way this is framed matters deeply. Security, the panel argued, must be understood not as an end in itself, but as a means to protect what Europe stands for – democracy, welfare, cultural life and human rights. This is especially important given that threat perceptions vary across the continent, with different concerns dominating in the north, south, east and west.

Any meaningful pan-European narrative will need to weave together fear, resilience and a shared vision of a Union that is safe in order to stay open. Civic educators, our speakers concluded, have a key role to play: they could train citizens to identify and manage their emotions, spot manipulation, and turn anxiety into collective action grounded in realistic hope and an active commitment to peace.

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What began as a sketch in Oslo will take full shape at the NECE Festival this September. Among the highlights:

• Masterclass – Unlocking citizen power: The three principles of participatory organisations with Jon Alexander and Unhack Democracy
• Masterclass – Hope-based communication with Thomas Coombes and Kristin Dannevig

See the full programme here.

Register for the festival here.

*This NECE lab was curated by THE CIVICS Innovation Hub in partnership with The European Wergeland Centre (EWC).

** NECE is financially supported by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education | bpb and led by THE CIVICS Innovation Hub.