One World or None brings democracy alive.
We are a global cultural initiative bringing democracy done differently into the public imagination.
Together we build the cultural conditions for citizens’ assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy to move from unknown to understood, from understood to wanted, and from wanted to a normal part of how difficult decisions get made.
Systems don’t change until stories do. We build the imagination, understanding, trust and public hunger that can make better ways of deciding together normal.
Through film, games, art, live experiences and popular culture, we turn democracy done differently from an abstract idea into stories and experiences people can see, feel and step into.
We are a global community of people who have experienced citizens’ assemblies and other democratic innovations, working with artists, filmmakers, game-makers, civic leaders and many unlikely allies from diverse places, views and backgrounds across the world.
Upgrading how society makes decisions isn’t radical. It’s overdue.
This is no spectator sport. Democracy is yours and mine.
You’re invited.
Bringing democracy alive.
The problems of our age are huge and entangled. Each asks us to make choices across generations, interests and ways of life.
Yet politics too often asks us to choose a side before we have understood the choice.
Complexity becomes a slogan.
Difference becomes division.
Citizens become spectators.
People do not trust politics to solve what matters. Many feel politically homeless - spoken for, spoken at, or shut out of the decisions shaping their lives.
We do not lack ideas. We lack trusted ways of shaping them. And deciding on them.
Who chooses.
Who pays.
Who benefits.
Who is heard.
What we owe one another, and the future.
Why
Another way is already happening.
In citizens’ assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy, people from different lives and beliefs are chosen by lottery to reflect the wider public.
They are given time, trustworthy information and a fair chance to listen - to experts, to lived experience and to one another.
They face complexity. They grapple with trade-offs. They meet people they might otherwise know only as an argument, an enemy or a label.
They don’t always agree. But they show that ordinary people, when respected, informed, and supported, can make wise, nuanced, future-facing decisions together.
People are not the problem. We are the missing part of the solution.
When people see and feel citizens making democracy work, trust comes back.
But most people have never seen democracy work this way.
It remains hidden in specialist language, policy papers and rooms the public rarely gets to enter.
What stays unseen stays unimaginable.
And what people cannot imagine, they will never ask for.
What
Systems don’t change until stories do.
That is why One World or None exists.
We are cultural activators for democracy done differently.
At the heart of our work are people who have experienced democracy done differently. We bring them together with artists, filmmakers, game-makers, civic leaders, decision-makers and unlikely allies.
We work where public imagination is formed: through film, games, art, live experiences and popular culture.
We turn abstract systems into human stories.
We create moments where people can:
imagine democracy
feel it
step into it
shape it
We turn spectators into participants.
We do not build the machinery of democracy.
We build the cultural conditions that make better democracy inevitable. For in the words of adrienne marie brown “Culture is where we collectively decide what is normal, what is exciting, whom we include and whose stories we can tell. Policy follows.”
Our work is rigorously non-partisan. We are not here to tell people what to think. We are here to create the conditions in which people can think together.
This is how change travels.
Imagination opens possibility.
Culture makes possibility real.
Experience creates understanding.
Understanding creates belief.
Belief creates demand.
Demand gives institutions permission.
That is how democracy done differently moves from unknown to understood, from understood to wanted, and from wanted to normal.
How
Our ambition is for citizens’ assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy to become a normal, trusted and loved part of how societies make difficult decisions -
demanded by the public,
welcomed by politicians and decision-makers,
embedded in culture.
Vision
This platform will go live with stories, a new feature film, a digital game and global creative projects in November 2026.
Thank you to Quadrature Climate Foundation, European Climate Foundation, Tristan Clark, Michael Wynn Jones and Delia Smith for your support and funding.
UK not-for-profit company number: 16135401
Small print
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