#DXC23 Summit

Co-presented by OCAD University, the Leadership Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Open Democracy Project, the fourth DemocracyXChange Summit will bring together students, researchers, practitioners, public servants, community organizers, and leaders from the private, public and not-for-profit sector to connect, learn and emerge with new partnerships, plans and actions to strengthen democratic institutions and civil society.

DemocracyXChange 2023 will include live talks, hands-on workshops, networking opportunities, and special guests, with a focus on three core themes: 

• Integrity of information
• Economic and social inequality, and 
• Trust in governance

We'll look at democratic resilience – the ability of our democracies to withstand threats from the outside and the inside – throughout the Summit.

Democracy Futures

Note: Space at Democracy Futures is limited. All DXC23 registrants are invited to apply to attend. You will be sent a link to the application by email once you register for DXC23 below. If you registered but did not receive an email with the Democracy Futures application link, email us at contact@democracyxchange.org.

The Democracy Futures Workshop, designed by OCAD U’s Super Ordinary Laboratory under the leadership of Professor Suzanne Stein and OCADU CO., in collaboration with TMU’s Leadership Lab and Brookfield Institute, will invite participants to consider: How might we create a resilient, successful, and sustainable democracy? To help answer this question, we will explore three significant drivers of change, namely: social inequality, misinformation, and trust in governance. Throughout the workshop, participants will examine each of these critical drivers through the lens of impact on resilient democracy and within the larger context of climate change.

Workshop participants should expect to draw on their own areas of expertise while working through various tools and processes of strategic foresight. Strategic foresight is an approach to rigorously look at different possibilities of how the future may unfold over time. Workshop facilitators will guide small groups through each of the exploratory activities in order to uncover new insights, connections, implications and opportunities for the future of democracy. The workshop will be participatory and require participants to work together to develop new visions for a resilient democracy.

Due to the participatory nature of the workshop, participants should be an expert in their field. Taken together, workshop participants will represent points of view spanning policy, governance, academia, civil society, economics, technology, environment, culture, and more. Participants will be drawn from an invited list,  as well, registrants of DXC23 can also apply to participate.