Barcelona's democracy, participation and technology festival is being held using a mixed format on 20, 21 and 22 October 2021.
As usual, DecidimFest is presented as an open space for proposals by city residents. For that reason, every year it offers individuals and organisations who have something to contribute to the festival the chance to make content proposals. If you think you have something to say about democracy, technology or global justice, don’t hesitate. Present your proposal to the campaign!
Moment of change
In the midst of the digital society, technological development has changed and is changing the economy, power relationships, governance models, citizen participation and relationships with the planet, in so far as we are progressing towards a society that is increasingly hyperconnected and interdependent.
However, the design of technologies and how they are spreading in society indicate an uncertain future. We will encounter sophisticated control and surveillance mechanisms and complex data extraction and exploitation systems, while also generating collective resistance, emancipation and defence mechanisms that seek global justice.
Initiating a debate on the future of technology, as DecidimFest 2021 will be doing, is to initiate a debate on the future of society and how to organise, govern and participate in it. Debates that are also becoming more urgent, due to the serious climate emergency.
New ways of participating
Furthermore, DecidimFest 2021 will be a chance to tackle all these questions on a global scale, based on experience and the principles of the Decidim project, the open-source tool the decidim.barcelona citizen participation platform is configured with.
In the area of citizen participation, if we ever set foot in Barcelona, we have seen how public hearings, neighbourhood councils, committees, participative processes and citizen initiatives are disseminated virtually through video conferences, online collaborative documents and digital platforms like the one we use in the city: decidim.barcelona.
#DecidimFest21, el festival es consolida
This will be the third edition of DecidimFest, after the 2020 sessions, which dealt with democracy and technology during times of emergency, and the first edition, which reflected on rethinking the networked city of the future.
The sessions are the result of the success and effort of the Meta Decidim community, which voluntarily reflects on and improves the decidim.org platform.