Partners

The work on this site only becomes real through the industries, institutions and civic bodies willing to put a genuine question to a room of citizens and act on the answer.

• Arketa Institute for Post-Growth Finance

  Research and practitioner support for a financial system that stops assuming growth.

  Arketa works with investment professionals to align finance with environmental and wellbeing objectives — an economy that provides for everyone within the limits of the planet. The name is the Greek αρκετά, "enough", which is the argument in one word. Its work on pensions runs alongside the pension strand of this canon.

• New Citizen Project

  A participation consultancy working on the shift from consumer to citizen.

  Operating since 2014, New Citizen Project helps organisations involve people as citizens rather than as consumers, across strategy, culture and delivery — including citizens' assemblies and public dialogues. It is the practitioner end of the argument this imprint makes in writing.

• Capacity Finance

  Unlocking pension capital for long-term environmental stewardship.

  A programme of the Cape Cod Center for Sustainability, founded by Tim MacDonald and Fraser Murison-Smith, working on the financial mechanisms that would let patient savings be steered into genuinely long-term investment. The same question the Gateways papers on pension stewardship put to citizens.

• Sortition USA

  A member-run nonprofit promoting the use of democratic lotteries.

  A 501(c)(3) with chapters across America, working for civic assemblies in which everyday people, chosen by lottery, are given a say on the issues that affect them — from citizens' assemblies to oversight boards and legislative juries. It runs the Saturday Board at the farmers' market in Madison, Wisconsin — the process described in The Civic Mill — and publishes each board's report and data openly on the Civic Mill site.

What a partnership involves

A partner brings a real decision to the table that is genuinely still open, and we explore the overlap between deliberation and the partner’s interests, drawing in expertise as needed. In some cases this exploration is purely theoretic, often being explored in a public facing panel discussion with a view to generating a gateway statement.

However, in some cases we commit to finding ways for an assembly’s answer to be heard in public, and develop proceedings which involve live assemblies or workshops. The imprint brings connections, knowledge of the processes, the record and the publication — the proceedings of our events become a numbered work in the canon like any other.

Upcoming and past events are on the events page, and the people behind this work are on who are we.