In recent years, Poland has faced democratic challenges, prompting renewed interest in citizen engagement and deliberative democracy. Civil society organizations, some of which have been active for over a decade, have played a key role in fostering a culture of participation. As a result, Poland has become one of the most active countries in Central and Eastern Europe when it comes to organizing citizens’ assemblies.

The Spring School on Climate Citizens’ Assemblies offers a unique opportunity to gain practical skills in designing and running citizens’ assemblies. In collaboration with experienced local organizations—the Shipyard Foundation, Field of Dialogue Foundation—and the City of Warsaw, the school provides hands-on training, case-based learning, and interactive group work.

A special one-day Deep Dive on Involving Children and Youth in Citizens’ Assemblies will provide additional insights into making deliberative processes more inclusive and representative.

PROGRAM

Deliberative democracy is gaining traction as a solution to political polarization and public disengagement. This session provides an introduction to Citizens’ Assemblies—what they are, how they work, and why they are increasingly used to tackle complex policy issues. Drawing on best practices, we explore when deliberative processes are most effective and how they can be integrated into decision-making.
Graham Smith, Chair, KNOCA Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies
How the assembly question -or remit- is framed significantly shapes the deliberative process and its outcomes. This session examines how different framing choices—such as focusing on mitigation vs. adaptation in climate assemblies—can lead to varied policy recommendations. We will discuss how to balance broad and narrow framing, ensuring inclusivity while maintaining specificity for actionable results.
Kelly McBride, Participatory & Deliberative Design Specialist
Ensuring diversity and inclusivity in a Citizens’ Assembly is crucial for legitimacy. This session explores sortition (civic lottery) as the best method for recruiting a representative group. However, not all demographics engage equally. We will discuss how to overcome barriers for underrepresented groups, including targeted outreach, financial support, and inclusive facilitation techniques.
Katarzyna Pawłowska, Project Coordinator, Shipyard Foundation
Ewa Stokłuska, Director of Institutional Development, Expert in Public Participation, Shipyard Foundation
The governance structure of a Citizens’ Assembly plays a crucial role in ensuring its credibility, independence, and impact. This session explores different governance models, including government-led, independent secretariats, and multi-stakeholder oversight bodies. We will discuss key questions such as: Who oversees the process? How are roles and responsibilities distributed? What mechanisms ensure transparency and fairness? Drawing on real-world examples, this session will provide insights into how governance structures shape the effectiveness, legitimacy, and long-term impact of deliberative processes.
Eva Mackeviča, Coordinator of Particiaptory and deliberative processes, Pole Dialogu
A Citizens’ Assembly moves through distinct phases to produce informed and credible recommendations. It begins with the learning phase, where participants engage with diverse experts and balanced evidence. In the deliberation phase, they exchange perspectives, weigh trade-offs, and build consensus. This leads to recommendation drafting, where ideas take shape as concrete proposals, refined for clarity and feasibility. Finally, the decision-making phase determines the final recommendations through voting or consensus. This session will walk participants through each stage, showing how careful design and facilitation ensure legitimacy, impact, and political relevance.
Kyle Redman, Programme Manager, FIDE - Europe
One of the biggest challenges for Citizens’ Assemblies is ensuring their recommendations lead to real policy impact. This session addresses best practices for securing political commitments, engaging the public, and integrating assembly outputs into policy cycles. We will explore cases where assemblies have influenced legislation, as well as instances where recommendations were ignored and why.
Yves Dejaeghere, Executive Director, FIDE - Europe
- Communications: Camille Dobler, Head of Research, Missions Publiques
- Facilitation: Zuzanna Nowak, Trainer, Facilitator, Deliberation expert
- Evaluation: Paulina Pospieszna, Assistant Professor, Adam Mickiewicz University
Structured on the KNOCA guidance, the workshop of Child Rights International Network will present a children’s rights-based framework for designing and delivering participatory/deliberative democratic processes with children and young people. These processes include: setting the remit, organising sortition/democratic lottery with children and young people, safeguarding and inclusion, deliberative tools and methods, facilitation techniques, and monitoring and evaluating impact.
Katie Reid, Adviser (Children’s Rights, Democracy and Climate), CRIN
Lianne Minasian, Co-Director, CRIN
Download here.

SPEAKERS

Head of Research at Missions Publiques

Camille joined the Missions Publiques team after four years working in academia as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow: her own research questioned the inter-linkages between citizen participation, deliberation and political identities in the EU. Since then, Camille has been working extensively with EU institutions towards the institutionalisation of deliberative mini publics at the European level. She now coordinates the Horizon Europe Project ScaleDem, which explores new avenues to scale the impact of democratic innovations across contexts.

Programme Manager, FIDE - Europe
Kyle has designed and operated several of newDemocracy's major citizens’ assembly projects, including for the ACT Government, Local Government Victoria, Western Sydney University, and the City of Sydney.
He has also worked with international partners to design democratic innovations in Brazil, Malawi, Spain and more. He is an Executive Board Member of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy - Europe, and a member of Australia’s Open Government Forum. He has also co-authored the United Nations Democracy Fund handbook Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections, and the recently published book The A, B & C of Democracy.

Participatory & Deliberative Design Specialist

Kelly facilitates collaborative opportunities for diverse groups of people to learn together, make decisions and take action. She specialises in deliberative and participatory approaches. She works across different themes, places and levels of the system.

Until the end of 2024, Kelly led the community engagement practice at TPXimpact and worked with a multidisciplinary team to improve outcomes for people, place and planet.

Chair, KNOCA Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies
Graham Smith is Professor of Politics and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster and Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development.

Graham is an international expert on climate assemblies and was recognised by Apolitical as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Academics in Government. He is the author of Can Democracy Safeguard the Future?

Civic participation specialist, Shipyard Foundation

Kasia has prior experience in central administration. In her current work, she focuses on enhancing public dialogue and deliberation, especially on a local level. She helps local governments and various institutions in planning and conducting public consultations. She coordinates citizens’ assemblies and smaller deliberation formats such as citizens’ juries and councils, mostly on climate- and environment-related issues. She co-authored several publications on how to run an assembly/a jury.

Executive Director, FIDE - Europe
Yves worked as a senior researcher in political science at KULeuven and the University of Antwerp and as a guest professor at several other universities in Belgium and France. He was also a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford (UK).
He has acted as an expert amongst others for the European Court of Auditors, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and a number of local, regional and national governments.

Trainer, Facilitator, Deliberation expert
Zuzanna is a trainer and facilitator with nearly ten years of experience in designing and leading group processes using NFE methodology: from youth seminars, through local level assemblies, all the way to European Citizens' Panels. The originator and co-creator of the internationally recognized Training Camp for Citizens' Assemblies' Coordinators with over 100 alumni worldwide. She supports deliberative processes in and outside of Poland in various capacities: as an expert advisor, designer, coordinator, facilitator, and more. Her greatest professional joy is helping people feel empowered and meaningful. She is also a ceramic artist in the making (with a degree from the Fine Arts University in Wroclaw) and a passionate home cook.

Coordinator, Particiaptory and Deliberative Processes, Fondacja Pole Dialogu
Eva is the Head of Participatory and Deliberative Projects at the Field of Dialogue Foundation in Poland. She has designed and coordinated deliberative processes at municipal and national level, in Poland and abroad. As a facilitator she also supported European Citizens Panel on Energy Efficiency. Together with Center for Blue Democracy she co-created a Training Camp for CA Coordinators that helped practitioners and civil servants in discovering what assemblies have to offer in their context. Her special interests include institutionalizing deliberative tools and embedding them in local and national law.

Associate Professor of Political Science, Adam Mickiewicz University
Paulina leads the Democratic Innovations research group at Adam Mickiewicz University. Her research focuses on deliberative democracy, citizens' assemblies, and democratic innovations, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the Principal Investigator for: DelibDemCEE, i4i. Her recent work explores the impact of citizens’ assemblies on policy, political engagement, and democratic legitimacy, as well as the design and effectiveness of random selection processes in deliberative forums. She has been published in Democratization,Journal of Sortition, and East European Politics, and recently co-edited “Deliberative Innovations: Inspirations for Practitioners and Theorists”. She has collaborated with NGOs and policymakers to assess evaluation of CAs, co-developing pre and post survey tools used to measure deliberation quality and public trust.

INVOLVING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

A deep dive

Adviser, Children’s Right, Democracy and Climate, Child Rights International Network
Katie’s work and research over the last ten years has focused on child, youth and intergenerational participatory processes on issues related to the environment and climate change. In her work with CRIN, Katie focuses on how deliberative democratic processes such as citizens’ assemblies can better involve children and young people, having led the children’s participation process in Scotland’s Climate Assembly and Ireland’s Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. She currently advises on several citizens’ assemblies taking place at the national and transnational (EU) level.

Co-Director, Child Rights International Network
Lianne has worked for CRIN for over fi ve years with a focus on children’s environmental rights, including co-developing its group of Climate Advisers and engaging in key global climate advocacy spaces alongside them. She co-leads CRIN and focuses on a range of children’s rights issues, including children’s rights and democracy.

REGISTRATIONS

School Tickets

School Pass: 250€ (4-5th June)

Full Access Pass: 300€ (4-6th June)

Deep Dive Ticket: 100€ (6th June)

(all prices incl. 21 % VAT)

Ticket Types: The School Pass includes access to the programme on 4-5th June, catering during the two days and dinner on Wednesday, June 4th. The Full Access Pass also includes the programme of the deep dive and lunch on June 6th. The Deep Dive Ticket includes catering for June 6th and the deep-dive programme.

Free Tickets: A limited number of free tickets are available at the discretion of the organiser. We grant these tickets to participants with limited resources and who will implement the skills gained in the school. If you think you are eligible, there is a dedicated question in the registration form to let us know.

The capacity is limited, and every applicant will be notified about their status.

Venue: Widok Towers, Warsaw, Al. Jerozolimskie 44, 00-024, Poland

Registration deadline: Wedneday, May 28th

Cancellation policy: