The recent conference in Vienna, titled “Transition to a (more) socially and environmentally just future,” brought together activists, researchers, and community organisers from across Europe to explore pathways toward a more sustainable, democratic, and anti-authoritarian society. With a strong focus on prefiguration, two of us from PEP (the Participatory Economics Project) were active contributors to the event.
Recordings of the event can be found here.
The conference featured everything from talks and workshops to music and a theatre performance. Held in early October 2025, this was the second in a series of conferences. The first, titled “The crisis of nation-states – anarchist answers?”, took place in 2001 and explored themes of anarchist theory, social organisation, and self-management. A conference book was later published under the title “Anarchistische Gesellschaftsentwürfe” (Anarchist Social Designs), now in its third edition.
Inside the Vienna Conference
One of the keynote speakers was Konstantin Wecker, a well-known German singer, songwriter, poet, and activist, famous for his songs about peace and social justice. He read a poem, which was very well received by the audience.
The conference also included a performance. On the first night, Dada Zirkus, a contemporary circus company from Austria, performed a mix of theatre, acrobatics, and dance. They told a modern fairy tale that was funny, creative and thought-provoking.
There was music throughout the event, with musicians performing their own renditions of traditional activist songs such as the “Einheitsfrontlied” (a German Workers’ Song).
The Theatre of the Oppressed was also there, where people took part in games which practice cooperation and facilitate discussion.
The Workshops and talks covered a range of topics: from anarchist anti-militarism and social defence strategies to queer-feminist organising, education for ecological awareness, and digital anarchism.
The “Visualising Assemblies” workshop, created by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky, was a fun and creative session where participants used colured pens and paper to imagine the future through different scenarios.
Participants described the conference as a positive experience that strengthened connections among those who attended. As a result, another conference is already being planned for next year in Freiburg (Germany).
At this year’s event, two of us from PEP took part in both a panel on assemblies and a workshop on prefiguration. Although the discussions were not focused specifically on a Participatory Economy, the concept of prefigurative transition—through participation and community assemblies—offers a crucial tool for moving toward a Participatory Economy and Society.
Panel on Assemblies
Jason from PEP was a speaker on a panel about lottocracy, citizen assemblies and council democracy. Jason spoke about his experience with climate activism and extinction rebellion, the current situation and state repression in the UK against activists and about new peoples’ assemblies democracy projects, including Assemble and Cooperation Hull, which have emerged to address the necessity to upgrade our outdated parliamentary political system to one based on bottom-up deliberative assemblies. The panel discussed more broadly how democratic assemblies can act as stepping stones in the transition to a more participatory society. When well designed and organised, assemblies not only empower communities to make collective decisions but also model the kind of cooperation and inclusion that a participatory future would requir.
Workshop on Prefiguration
On day two, Jason and I run a workshop on Prefiguration – a core strategy in anarchism around building new institutions today which model the future society we want to see in the future. We facilitated discussion about prefigurative politics and how it can guide practical steps today
The workshop was designed to be in three parts. First, we introduced related concepts, including self-determination theory, a major body of work in psychology which has identified autonomy, relatedness and competence as key human psychological needs for human well-being and motivation, as well as the innovation adoption curve, which explains a population’s attitude to technological and social changes.
In the main activity of the workshop, in breakout groups, participants brainstormed examples of prefigurative projects today in three categories: 1) where we work, 2) where we live and 3) where we learn. We then talked about the many examples, including intentional communities, worker-cooperatives and self-directed education centres. We ran out of time for the final activity, which would have been to design a Cooperation Vienna project, modelled on other community projects, such as Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, U.S and Cooperation Hull in England.
While the discussion wasn’t focused exclusively on participatory economics we would like to briefly reflect on this here.
What is Prefiguration?
Prefiguration is a method of pursuing social change in which a group’s actions in the present embody the principles of the future society they aim to create. This means building the values of freedom, equality, and democracy directly into the daily practices and organisational structures of movements today.
However, prefiguration is more than simply creating the future in the present. Its power lies in how the people practicing it are themselves transformed. By living democracy and autonomy now, participants begin to internalise and value these principles as part of who they are.
A historical example can be found in syndicalist unions, particularly in Spain during the Spanish civil war, where the internal structure was based on bottom-up federation and democratic decision-making. Through this practice, workers developed autonomy and a lived commitment to democracy within their organisations.
Contemporary Examples: Cooperation Hull and Assemble
Cooperation Hull is a grassroots organisation based in Hull, UK. Its strategy centres on local democracy—building decision-making from the bottom up through People’s Assemblies at the neighbourhood level and a city-wide assembly in Hull. The long-term goal is to replace the government by creating a networked system of self-governing assemblies, where local and city assemblies connect with others across the UK.
This is prefiguration in action: local people, by participating directly in democratic processes, are practicing and internalising democracy and autonomy, transforming themselves and becoming active agents in shaping their own lives.
Assemble is another UK-based grassroots democracy organisation. Its goal is to create a “House of the People,” a democratic chamber built from the bottom up through citizens’ assemblies, as an alternative to the House of Lords. Assemble organises local assemblies across the country, gathers participants’ priorities, and synthesises them into a People’s Charter—a set of national policy proposals.
This too is a prefigurative practice: through the growing network of local assemblies, people in the UK are transforming themselves by engaging in self-governance, learning democracy by doing it, and embodying autonomy in the process.
Toward a Participatory Economy
Through these and other experiments in autonomy and democracy, we can glimpse potential pathways toward a participatory society. While we cannot predict what democratic communities will ultimately choose, it is likely that people who live and value democracy and autonomy will seek a freer, fairer, and more ecologically sustainable future.
A Participatory Economy is one possible model within that broader vision—an option that communities can explore and experiment with as part of the evolving prefigurative process.
What do you think?
Could this kind of prefigurative organising be a viable pathway toward a sustainable, participatory future?
Start the discussion at forum.participatoryeconomy.org