The NECE Festival is an annual event that brings together stakeholders from civil society, politics, academia, media, and culture for an interactive and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and actions. The festival is held in various European cities and focuses on a specific topic that is highly relevant to civic education.
In 2025, we will explore HOPE.
European festival of civic education: HOPE
2-4 September 2025, Oslo
Programme
The NECE Festival provides a platform for courageous and visionary thinkers to present bold ideas and drive forward initiatives that address these challenges. You’ll have the opportunity to network with over 200 participants from civil society, politics, science, media, and culture, sharing best practices and exploring possibilities for civic educators.
Join us in Oslo, Norway, in September 2025 for an empowering and inspiring event aimed at exploring how we can harness the power of collective hope to drive resilient, ethical, and sustainable transformation in communities worldwide! Read more about this year’s theme here.
Hope as a collective aspiration is what we will explore at NECE 2025. In the past, movements like civil rights thrived not because of individual optimism but because of a shared belief that through solidarity, justice could be achieved.
We will also focus on hope as a force to motivate, mobilise, and activate. Hope drives action, and it is the invisible engine behind revolutions and reforms. The global climate movement is a prime example of this: local efforts and global marches alike are powered by the belief that change is possible, even in the face of political inertia.
Hope as a unifying force will be another key theme. In times of political instability, hope serves as the glue that binds divided communities, enabling them to move toward compromise and cooperation. Moreover, hope as resilience is vital. Hope manifests in the ability to withstand challenges and rebuild. After disasters or authoritarian regimes, hope breathes life back into communities, enabling them to recover and persist, to push forward in the face of overwhelming odds.
Finally, we will explore hope as a moral foundation. Hope isn’t neutral – it’s rooted in values like justice, equality, and compassion. Communities don’t simply hope for any future; they hope for a better, more ethical one. Throughout the festival, we will draw inspiration from leading thinkers, educators, and activists whose initiatives have shown that hope is not just a concept for reflection, but a strategic tool for action. The future is not something we passively inherit. It is something we co-create, even in the most difficult of contexts.
The NECE Festival 2025 is organised with The European Wergeland Centre (EWC). EWC supports THE CIVICS as a local partner organisation for the implementation of the festival in Oslo.
