Author: Marc Steinemann, Faktor D and Campus für Demokratie

Democracy Fitness is a programme designed to encourage active participation in society in a fun way by training citizens’ “democracy muscles”. Invented in Denmark in 2017, the concept of "Democracy fitness" has now taken off in many other European countries. It comprises a number of 30-minute workshops teaching a range of skills and values that are important for democratic co-existence. The organisation Campus für Demokratie (“Campus for Democracy”) is now bringing this concept to Switzerland, because we too are in need of stronger democratic processes of negotiation.

Workshop in Vienna – a first-hand report

Delegates at the EPALE and ERASMUS+ Conference held in Vienna on 22 May were invited to attend a 90-minute workshop led by Noa Dibbasey and myself, Marc Steinemann, from Campus für Demokratie. We wanted to train two key “democracy muscles” that participants possessed – their courage muscle and their disagreement muscle.

Democracy Fitness workshop © OeAD/APA-Fotoservice/Hörmandinger

Training the courage muscle

We began the workshop by training our courage muscles, starting with a brief introduction in which we explained how courage is important in a democratic society. People need courage in order to express their opinion and stand up for their values, both in their daily lives and in political processes. Participants learnt for themselves how different feelings are linked to certain body positions before being asked to pick a cause that they wanted to advocate for while demonstrating courage in the process. They then got into pairs to discuss the previous activity and encourage each other. This exercise showed that courage can be strengthened collectively as well as individually.

Discussion about rolling out the concept to Austria

After the first part of the workshop, we discussed how the Democracy Fitness concept could be introduced in Austria and adapted accordingly. We shared our experiences from Switzerland and gathered ideas and suggestions from participants. It was impressive to see how committed and creative the proposals were, and it was clear that there is widespread interest in getting the programme off the ground.

Training the disagreement muscle

The third part of our workshop focused on the disagreement muscle. The aim was to show those taking part how important it is to be accepting of different views, to stand up for what you yourself think, and to deal constructively with differences of opinion. We kicked things off with an exercise in which participants had to take a stance on a range of controversial topics. This was because the subsequent discussions required us to have issues that divided people roughly into two camps, something that proved harder than we had expected! Finally, we identified diet and nutrition as a topic that split the field evenly. The next exercise consisted in debating a controversial issue in pairs, listening actively to what was being said, and rebutting it respectfully. The exercise highlighted how, besides being completely normal, differences of opinion are also highly valuable for a functioning democracy.

Concluding remarks and outlook

The workshop concluded with a final motivational round in which we stressed the importance in our day-to-day lives of the two muscles that we had been training. I told participants that these skills are useful in many areas of our lives, not only in political debates. We gave everyone a pin badge to thank them for taking part and encouraged them to keep on using and practising the skills that they had acquired. 

The workshop in Vienna was a success and a good example of how Democracy Fitness can bring people together and motivate them to participate actively in society. The positive feedback that we received and the sustained interest that we are seeing indicate that the concept has significant potential in Austria too. Democracy Fitness can help to make people more democracy-minded and encourage civic participation – a major step towards a vibrant and resilient democracy.

About this blog: 

This blog post is based on a workshop held at the 2024 EPALE and ERASMUS+ Conference entitled “Focusing on Participation: New Paths to Active Participation through Adult Education”.