Can we separate politics from democracy? Our political system is wholly corrupt and no longer fit for purpose – if it ever was. What if Citizens’ Assemblies could bring agency to the whole of our population, helping people to find empathy with each other, to engage in conversations in good faith and work together to solve the wicked problems of the polycrisis: social inequity, climate chaos, the death cult of predatory capitalism.  These are so interlinked, we won’t fix one unless we fix them all.

So how do we do it?  This week, I’m talking to someone who spends her life reflecting on, teaching and researching this. Isabella Roberts started off in the Big Four, Private Equity and Investment Banking, then switched from the private markets into politics at the start of 2021 as a candidate for the London Assembly elections. Against the backdrop of the UK’s first year out of the EU and in the depths of the COVID pandemic, she was inspired to take a stand and be the change she wanted to see in the governance of the UK’s capital.

She then took on a Masters in Digital Politics and Sustainable Development.  Her thesis in 2023 focused on How Collective Intelligence Can Enhance Democracy, which resulted in the initiation of SAAFE which stands for: Space for Silent Contemplation and Reflection, Active Listening and Feeling Heard, Ability to Change One’s Mind, Feeling Connected as Part of the Whole, Epistemic Growth and Epistemic Humility – and which uses human-centred design principles for empowering participants in tech-enabled deliberation. This is an inquiry into what it means to be human in a digital age, in line with systems change towards a more deliberative democracy, and it has manifested in a multi-stakeholder project supported by the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton, bringing together democratic practitioners and the developers of deliberative technologies.  Meanwhile, Bella is the independent evaluator of two deliberative processes: the Birmingham Museums Trust Citizens’ Jury, and currently the National Gallery’s Citizens’ Assembly (NG Citizens). 
She also completed her first Vipassana course of 10-day silent meditation and is studying for a PhD with the title: Revolutionising deliberative democracy with immersive technology – a comparison between East and West.

Bella has explored the depth and breadth of what works, so that together, we can create a democracy that empowers ordinary people to help fix their communities and the wider world. Like previous podcast guests, Matt Golding of Antidote and Dylan McGarry of Empatheatre, Bella understands the sense of meaning and purpose and involvement that is so transformative – which was why this conversation was so rich and so deep.