At a time when democracy is under threat in many places, what can design do to defend it? How can it help to reinvent our democractic systems and make them fit for purpose? In this episode, author and activist, Claudia Chwalisz tells Design Emergency’s cofounder Alice Rawsthorn why and how she is leading a global campaign to redesign democracy as founder and CEO of the international non-profit research and action institute, DemocracyNext.

Born in Canada to a Polish family, Claudia has devoted the last decade to re-imagining democracy, first through her work at the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and, for the past year, with her colleagues and collaborators at DemocracyNext. Claudia explains how DemocracyNext is championing citizens assemblies as inclusive and deliberative forms of decision making, like those that debated the legalisation of abortion and same sex marriage in Ireland, and assisted dying in France. She discusses the role of sortition (randomly selecting decision-makers by lottery) to making our democratic systems fairer, and describes why design is a crucial tool in this process.

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Thank you for joining us. You can find images of Claudia and her work on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes ofDesign Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like Claudia, are forging positive change.

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Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

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