Welcome to The Democracy Sandpit

An initiative of Per Capita’s Centre of the Public Square powered by Civility

Interested in joining but don't have a login? Reach out to us and briefly explain your interest by clicking here.

Who are we?

The Democracy Sandpit is a non-partisan closed community of purpose of practitioners, academics, policy-makers, advocates and elected representatives seeking to collaborate to transform the practices of democracy.

Founding principles:

  • Our civic discourse is broken and needs to be fundamentally reimagined

  • It is no longer enough to describe the problem

  • We need to innovate new models of building consensus, investigating friction, deliberating tough choices and agreeing on responses

  • If we do this well, we can invert power from platforms back to communities

The Democracy Sandpit invites members to look for opportunities to share ideas, challenge assumptions, co-design projects and learn from each other.

It also tests the thesis that a closed, purpose-based online community can deliver members the connections and value that extractive Big Tech platforms promised but have failed to deliver.

By finding a space to innovate we also hope to build a model that organisations and alliances can deploy as part of their own community infrastructure.

Beta Period

Over a three-month Beta period, a select number of members will be invited to:

  • Explore new approaches

  • Test-drive pilots

  • Establish community rules and norms

  • Build new connections

What Happens in the Sandpit?

Instead of doom-scrolling on X, humble-bragging on LinkedIn or dodging the AI Slop on Meta, the sandpit invites participants to spend a few hours a week thinking and sharing.

  • We will run a community-sourced insights-feed which you can scroll on your phone. 

  • We will collaborate on building the rules and norms of the community as we go.

  • You can join a specific sandpit  based on an interest, practise or affinity group.

  • You can initiate your own sandpit.

  • You will be invited to take part in online forums and, over time, real world events.

FAQ

We encourage community members to check in 2-3 times per week and contribute to discussions of interest or initiate their own threads.

We will also convene regular small group discussions via Zoom, which will be promoted through the Events Page.

The idea of imagining public digital spaces is nothing new. Peter Lewis has been developing these ideas since 2019 when he published ‘Webtopia - The World Wide Wreck of Tech and How to Make the Net Work’

Since then he has combined his work as director of the progressive public affairs agency Essential with advocacy and campaigning work with Per Capita’s Centre of the Public Square. 

He created the Burning Platforms podcast, which emerged out of the Australia at home project during the pandemic and published a book of essays called ‘The Public Square Project’ in 2021.

In 2022 he founded Civility with Professor Nicholas Davis, developing technology that supported the Yes 23 campaign and Disability Dialogue.

The closest thing to a coherent picture of Peter’s thinking was set out in June 2024 under the conceit of ‘The Civility Manifesto’ - https://the-town-crier-2.ghost.io/this-is-not-a-manifesto-2/