The EU-funded research project ScaleDem has launched its Scaling Grounds, a 12-month programme in which 13 initiatives – five Pilot projects and eight Twinning communities, bringing together more than 30 organisations – will work to scale their democratic innovations. The programme began with a kick-off meeting in Cascais on 29–30 October 2026, hosted and coordinated by the European Capital of Democracy NPO with the support of the Municipality of Cascais.
Democratic innovations such as citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting and deliberative dialogues often work well where they are first tried. Far fewer manage to grow, move to new contexts or become a lasting part of how institutions make decisions. ScaleDem created the Scaling Grounds to close this gap between research and practice: participants will receive support to scale their work, while the consortium learns from their experience what makes that step possible.
The 13 initiatives were selected from more than 700 applications to ScaleDem’s Open Calls, through eligibility checks, independent jury evaluations and interviews. The programme has two tracks: the Pilot programme, which supports five projects that are already strengthening democracy and want to test bold new ways to scale their work, and the Twinning programme, which brings together eight communities, each pairing an experienced mentor organisation with mentee organisations that are adapting proven approaches to their own contexts.
In Cascais, the Pilots presented their projects and worked with ScaleDem researchers to apply the project’s analytical framework, which sets out the different ways in which an innovation can scale. The Twinning communities set shared long-term goals, defined what each mentee can realistically achieve within a year, and planned a series of community meetings.
Over the coming year, the consortium will support the participants and learn from both their successes and their setbacks. These lessons will feed into the ScaleDem Compass, a practical tool to guide future democratic innovators, planned for 2028.
“More than 700 organisations applied to our Open Calls. That tells us how much energy there is for strengthening democracy, and how many people are looking for ways to make their work last and travel further. In Cascais, we saw that energy turn into concrete plans. Our job now is to support these initiatives and learn alongside them.”
Léo Police (Missions Publiques), ScaleDem Co-Coordinator
The five Pilot partners and projects
- Sortition Europe (Lead): Scaling Inclusive Recruitment for Citizens’ Assemblies Across Europe
- Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG) (Lead), Center for Peacebuilding (CIM): From Pilot to System_Scaling Education for Democracy through Local Ownership in Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Center for the Advancement of Research and Development in Educational Technology (CARDET) (Lead): EMERGEn-CY: EMpowERinG civic Engagement and democratic participation in Cyprus
- Osmangazi Municipality (Lead): Bre2Act / From Breakfast to Action: A Deliberative Neighbourhood Dialogue Model for Participatory Local Governance
- European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA), Institute for Youth Development (IYD/Jashtar), Kyrgyzstan: Youth Voice_Local Choice — Jashtar Üni_Scaling Participatory Budgeting to Kyrgyzstan
The eight Twinning communities
- What about Dem mentors Social Fabric Lab in preparing a territory-wide Citizens’ Convention on the future of New Caledonia, building on the permanent citizens’ assembly the Congress established in 2026 (Belgium, France).
- Resilient Cities mentors LePKE, UAB The Critical and Self-Help Centre (Gdynia) in using its MAP rapid-prototyping framework, with physical interventions on local sites, to anchor democratic innovation in urban planning (Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland).
- Wandelwerk e.V. mentors Shared Future CIC, Asociación El Día Después and Community Council (Reengage Community) in keeping citizens engaged in democratic processes over time and anchoring their participation in local decision-making (Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany).
- Zelena akcija mentors Eko-svest and Krka Knin in applying its Green Phone methodology to mobilise political power for local citizen initiatives (Croatia, North Macedonia).
- SAME mentors ActivEU, PNTP, DRONI and Consiliul Național al Elevilor in adapting the Solidarity Action Day, a youth-led participation model, to their national contexts (Germany, Portugal, Moldova, Georgia, Romania).
- Democratic Society mentors Manisa Metropolitan Municipality, Çorlu Municipality and Centro Studi Sereno Regis in applying its Democratic Innovation Capacity framework to build the democratic capacity of public institutions (Belgium, Türkiye, Italy).
- SocLab Foundation mentors Alternative Communities Association in embedding participatory budgeting in Hungarian schools (Poland, Hungary).
- Directorio Legislativo mentors COPA in making ParlOur, COPA’s AI-powered platform for parliamentary transparency, stronger and transferable to other parliaments (Argentina, Armenia).
Photo courtesy of Missions Publiques