The DMV Democracy Festival

Mark your calendar for DemFest 2025, scheduled for Saturday, October 4, 1-6pm at All Souls Church Unitarian at 1500 Harvard St NW in Washington, DC. 

Donate here $100, $250, $500, or what you can to support DMV DemFest 2025!  

Click here for other simple ways you can support DemFest. 

Summary & Purpose 

Widen and deepen civic engagement, foster collaboration, and make democracy more fun and social with a financially sustainable, youth and family-friendly democracy festival in the Washington, DC capital region.

Context 

Dance, flowers, marijuana, beer and wine all get festivals.  If we want to make democracy more engaging for more people, rather than boring or divisive, why aren’t we investing in democracy festivals?  If democracy is so important to Americans, why don’t we have democracy festivals every year in towns and cities across the country?  If Washington DC is the capital of our country, and democracy is central to American freedom, why does DC have folk life, kite flying, and cherry blossom festivals, but no democracy festival?

In the mid to late 1800s, American democracy was often highly participatory and fun, involving parades, rallies, music, public speeches and debates, culminating in elections with some of the highest voter turnout in U.S. history.  Democracy then was also conflictual, corrupt and exclusionary (e.g., women and people of color were often or always barred from participating), so progressive reformers gradually remade American politics into what it is now: relatively orderly, peaceful, inclusive, yet also less fun.  Can we make democracy fun again, without spurring conflict, corruption and exclusion?  Learning Life, a DC-based educational nonprofit, believes we can, in part with democracy festivals, as part of a wider Democracy Learning Community (DLC).  And we’re not alone: democracy festivals are spreading in Europe. 

Here are five reasons to support democracy festivals, and here is a report on the first DMV Democracy Festival, which took place on October 26, 2024 at Friendship Collegiate Academy in DC.   

Goals

Produce a youth and family-friendly DMV Democracy Festival (DemFest) that:

  1. Makes democracy fun for all ages
  2. Widens participation in democracy
  3. Deepens civic learning
  4. Is financially self-sustaining, and helps grow the wider DLC 
  5. Fosters creative collaboration, particularly between folks in the DMV arts, education, business, philanthropic, and democracy sectors
Date, Location & Schedule

Mark your calendar!  DemFest 2025 is scheduled to occur on Saturday, October 4, 1-6pm at All Souls Church Unitarian at 1500 Harvard St NW in Washington, DC.  Stay tuned to this page for further details.  

Click here for the draft DemFest 2025 schedule.  

Activities & Deadlines

DemFest 2025’s activities are to be confirmed, but will likely include:   

  1. Games, digital or analog, stationary or active, for kids of different ages and adults to learn and practice democracy through play.
  2. Arts, like comedy, dance, theater, drawing or other productions related to democracy.     
  3. A democracy market: tables with information, resources, goods for sale, and opportunities to engage from a variety of democracy-related businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. 
  4. A Youth Summit on Youth Policymaking, allowing diverse DMV students to come together to learn, deliberate and propose school, city, county and/or state policies that empower youth. 
  5. Discussions on democracy and the DC region, media, education, economics, polarization and authoritarianism, and world democracy trends.   
Tickets, Sponsorship & Volunteering

RSVP to attend DemFest 2025, and we will send you updates periodically via email.   

Click here for information about sponsoring DemFest 2025 as an individual or organization. 

Click here to volunteer, speak or table at DemFest 2025.