Our House

Movements Trust / SCN

The rise of the far right, a dysfunctional electoral system, and widespread apathy. Our democracy is in desperate need of an update. Even though there are many tried and tested democratic innovations that can address the crises of trust and short-termism from citizens assemblies to crowdsourcing, very few have captured the public’s attention. As people lose faith in our current system and look for alternatives (authoritarianism), we urgently need to build a new narrative for more and better democracy. How do we build popular support for systems change that capitalises on a government committed to exploring democratic reform? Our House seeks to launch in 2025, kicking off a festival of democracy that results in a new citizen-led constitution, and through the participatory process, builds a movement of popular support for political systems change. This is ambitious and requires the scale of collaboration and organising so expertly delivered by the new right. As such, we’re seeking funding for a development phase this autumn where we’ll bring together people across the campaign, media, cultural and democratic sectors to shape the programme for success. We’ll then run a pilot with communities in Manchester to test our assumptions and build momentum towards the launch.