aula - democracy alive

aula is a completely new way of thinking about what participation means, offering young people the chance to play an active part in shaping the world around them. Our online platform and learning resources (click here) promote a better understanding of democracy and develop the skills needed to participate in it.

Preparing good, deliverable proposals and building majority support among your peers is the way to achieve real change. By doing this, young people learn that, by taking responsibility and showing commitment, they can be creators and influencers of their own (school) environments. aula brings together learning about the media and politics and lays the foundations for responsible political participation in a digital world.

aula was developed for schools, but has also been adapted to other contexts outside education, such as community decision-making.

 Who is involved? 

aula is a politik-digital e.V project. It was developed with the generous support of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (the German Federal Agency for Civic Education).

More about our network →

The goal of the project

Above all, aula aims to allow secondary school students to develop their own ideas about their school environment, to gather support for them and to decide how they will be implemented, all within a safe, regulated framework. As they go along, students are given the chance to reflect on the process in a classroom context and explore the links between everyday life decisions and democratic responsibility. In addition to reconsidering their own priorities, this challenges young people to think about their own abilities and limits, as well as what other people can do.