NECE festival 2025: HOPE

On September 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, we celebrated the NECE Festival 2025, held in Oslo under the theme HOPE. Over three days, more than 300 professionals, youth workers, and academics involved in civic education gathered to share experiences and good practices aimed at strengthening democracy in Europe.

The festival opened with the keynote Hope as a Smart Strategy for Social Change, which highlighted hope as a democratic skill and a powerful response to polarization, emphasizing emotional intelligence and collective resilience as key drivers of social change.

ECEC also took part in the Open Space sessions, where participants exchanged transformative civic education experiences and reflected on how to design practices that go beyond knowledge transmission to foster active, engaged citizenship with real impact on people’s lives.

In addition, ECEC participated in key sessions such as Hope in Dialogue: Reclaiming Democracy through Conversation and Ground-up Democracy: European Youth Voices & Norway’s Citizens’ Assemblies, which showcased dialogue and youth participation as essential tools for renewing democratic life.