Nacka is a municipality with 112,000 residents and over 600 providers of municipal services. They wanted to create a shared voice for the future – not only as an administrative entity but as a place and community. The Future Dialogue is part of the municipality's quality work and aims to gather residents' thoughts, ideas and visions.
Nacka Municipality – How to get young people to feel involved in democracy?
Nacka Municipality wanted to create a future dialogue where all voices – even those rarely heard – would have a place. With Democracy Day, the municipality took the initiative and invited over 1,300 students to a hackathon where young people's thoughts, ideas and dreams helped shape the picture of future Nacka. Through Vocean, their voices could be collected, analyzed and elevated on equal terms with everyone else.
About Nacka Municipality
"Conducting an event like this for almost 1,300 students simply cannot go wrong. That's when it feels safe to work with Vocean – the tool has proven that it holds up throughout the entire Future Dialogue.""
The Challenge
Traditional citizen dialogues tend to attract those already engaged: association activists, housing association chairpersons and politically interested people. But many, not least young people, rarely participate in these contexts. For Nacka Municipality, the question was therefore twofold:
- How do we reach young people who don't seek out the dialogue themselves?
- How do we create real engagement – not just participation on paper?
The Solution
Nacka Municipality therefore initiated Democracy Day – a full day where young people gathered for a hackathon focused on future Nacka. To build engagement, Communications Director Henrik Kelfve facilitated together with journalist and moderator Frida Boisen, which raised the energy in the room and gave the young people a feeling that their participation was for real. With the help of Vocean, Nacka could:
- Ask open questions with free text responses to 1,300 students
- Analyze the results in real time with AI to find core insights
- Ensure an inclusive process where all perspectives carried equal weight
- Deliver a finished report to schools, politicians and media directly after the event
Results & Impact
Through Democracy Day, Nacka Municipality has shown that it is possible to combine scalable citizen dialogue with deep participation. The project has become an inspiring example, both for Nacka itself and for other municipalities that want to make young people active co-creators of the future.The results are now being used as a basis for the municipality's future dialogue and strengthen the sense of transparency and trust.
Almost 1,300 students participated in the hackathon
The report with insights was completed and distributed to schools, politicians, managers and media within five days
Created new insights for the municipality's continued development work
Gave young people a clear voice in a process where they had previously been difficult to reach
Increased collaboration and co-creation between different sports and levels in the organization
Key Insights
Important lessons learned from the project implementation
Anchoring requires co-creation and participation
AI can strengthen the human process
Even smaller organizations can work data-driven
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