This year we took NECE to the vibrant city of Tirana. With over 200 participants from across Europe and beyond, the annual NECE Festival offered once again a platform for peer exchange and strategies aimed at bridging divides and strengthening civic education. Exploring the timely topic of BORDERS, over three days, the festival provided space for changemakers from diverse backgrounds to engage in important dialogue and share actionable ideas.

We opened at the Palace of Brigades on November 14th, where speakers, including the Mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj, and the Director of the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, Thomas Krüger, deliberated on the theme of borders as both barriers and opportunities. Author and philosopher Lea Ypi delivered a compelling speech, reflecting on the global migration system, tying her insights to Albania’s post-Cold War transition. She emphasised how migration, while alleviating economic challenges, exposes inequities in global systems – “If you are in favor of freedom of movement, you should be in favor of it for everyone, everywhere, at all times”, reflected the author of the bestselling book Free. Her call to reimagine citizenship as a universal, emancipatory concept resonated throughout the festival. According to Ypi, borders have always been “very open for some people and very closed for others”. The challenge is not just to deconstruct these exclusions but to reimagine citizenship as an emancipatory project – a tool for inclusion and solidarity, rather than a mechanism for division and exclusion.

“We don’t have the luxury of having cosmopolitan laws, […] but what we can have is cosmopolitan civic education.

So, my answer would be, when it comes to civic education, to gear the entire education curriculum to world belonging – which seems like a complicated task, but it’s actually very easy. The world is now so mixed, and so intercultural that even in countries that claim to be homogeneous, you never find a homogeneous person with a homogeneous background.”

Lea Ypi

London School of Economics and Political Science

In the following panel discussions, we expanded on how borders shape identities and challenge governance systems, but also other topics came up, such as the need for active and generous listening, the role of curiosity and respect in fostering dialogue, the importance of creating inclusive spaces for meaningful and more natural conversations, as well as the impact of local and regional initiatives on community engagement, and the necessity of supporting grassroots efforts to strengthen civic participation.

“I would argue we owe each other curiosity, but we also underestimate how expensive curiosity is. Attention is the greatest gift you can give, it’s also a very rare gift. We don’t have much cognitive capacity, and we think very highly of ourselves. It’s very difficult to be open-minded all the time. In fact, I would argue it’s impossible. But at the same time, we can’t run a society unless we are curious at least sometimes.”

Hakan Altınay

European School of Politics

Day two of the festival, hosted at the iconic Piramida Tirana, featured CUBE sessions discussing borders through the lens of climate resilience and equitable green policies, as well as with respect to tackling misinformation and scaling community cohesion. Migration policies took centre stage in a session examining their contradictions and impacts, underscoring the need for systems rooted in human rights and fairness.

The interconnection between local and global contexts kept emerging as a key theme. From the Western Balkans to the Middle East, participants reflected on the impact of historical borders and shared experiences of reconciliation and resilience. Civic education’s potential to address disparities and promote justice, particularly in underserved regions was highlighted multiple times.

On day three, next to DISCOVERIES within Tirana through field trips organised by local partners, the festival offered side events in the form of thematic labs which explored topics such as the barriers and enablers of intergenerational dialogue and financial literacy.

The festival concluded in the Tulla Cultural Center with reflections on hope and on what it means to be a part of a community as opposed to being a part of a network. Elif Güney Menderes, Founder of the Human Rights Academy in Türkiye, framed hope beautifully as a shared effort nurtured by the precious connections emerging within a community.

Looking back at the NECE Festival, we are proud of our growing community of passionate advocates dedicated to creating positive change across borders, and we are more than excited to continue these discussions in Oslo next year, where we will explore new horizons of hope and solidarity.

* This festival was made possible through collaboration with the Center Science and Innovation for Development (SCiDEV) as our primary local partner, support from the Open Society Foundations, the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation, and cultural advisor Edit Pula.

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

Participants about the festival: 

“The discussion made me think a lot about different topics and dive deeper into my own thoughts about borders, about curiosity, exploration. How do we listen to each other, how do we collaborate and how do we inspire each other. How important is community and people we surround each other with.”

“NECE festival gave me a lot of food for thought and reflection about migration, future of democracy and how we have to fight for it.”

“NECE offered valuable discussions on climate action, including how civic education can be used to inspire action for sustainability,especially among young people.”

“The creative process of the lab was very participatory, we need more of this at conferences. The process was playful yet so efficient at the end.”

View the full gallery here.