The Trials of Democracy: Who Gives a XXXX?
Our next event:
Sunday 24th August: Trials of Democracy at Cambridge City Council’s Out of the Ordinary Festival
We will be taking part in Cambridge’s free outdoor arts festival, Out of the Ordinary. There will be stalls and performances from community groups, local performance groups, and acclaimed artists. Full line up to be announced in late July!
Menagerie Theatre’s 2024/25 Public Art Project
The Trials of Democracy is Menagerie’s Public Art project for 2024-25. It is a unique collaboration between our own Patrick Morris and visual artist Hilary Cox Condron. This project is also being supported by Cambridge City Council.
Click through on the images to see all the work we’ve been doing so far. From badges to plays - there’s a lot more to democracy than meets the eye…
To keep up to date with all future events and opportunities from this project, sign up to our mailing list and follow our socials!
Patrick & Hilary gave a workshop at the Co-Op AGM, 17th May 2025. The artwork behind them was specially made by students at Rowan, under Hilary’s direction.
What will happen as part of this project?
We will be running a range of open-access workshops all around Cambridge, inviting people to explore their own relationship to DEMOCRACY – the political system under which we live. These sessions will be led by Menagerie’s Patrick Morris and visual artist Hilary Cox Condron.
What is it all going towards?
The culmination will be a weekend of performances, art exhibits, and installations which articulate the diverse experiences of our system of government on 4/5th October 2025. Using the old Cambridge Guildhall courthouse, we will put DEMOCRACY itself under the spotlight.
How can I get involved?
We’ll have events popping up all over the city! Follow us on socials and sign up to our mailing list to be the first to hear about how you can get involved in 2025.
Since our first Trials of Democracy workshops in November 2024, we’ve engaged with over 300 members of the public across 3 Cambridge wards: Coleridge, Petersfield, and Market.
The below data has all been collected from these workshops and paints a picture of what you’ve told us you think of democracy…
*data below is from workshops conducted between January - May 2025
Your Vote:
What many people think of when they first hear the word ‘democracy’ is the General Election, and rightly so! We asked each of our participants whether or not they voted in the last general election (for some participants, this will be the 2019 election).
A massive 80.4% of our participants answered YES to this question, a much larger number than the national voter turnout of 59.7% and Cambridge voter turnout of 60.4% at the 2024 General Election. We’re keen to speak to more people who don’t often vote - is that you?
Everyday Democracy:
At many of our workshops, we asked our participants to tell us how they practice ‘everyday democracy’ - this could anything from reading the news to running your own city wide protest!
We’ve put together all of our answers to this question to form the below ‘word cloud’. The largerer the word, the more times it appeared in our answers. Do these line up with how you practice everyday democracy? What do you think everyday democracy is?
We also asked people to justify why they did/didn’t vote in the last general election. Some of those answers are below:
YES, I vote in the last election because…
Two people said “people died to get the vote”
Four people said “to make real change”
One person said “it’s essential for democracy!”
Four people said “to exercise my right to vote”
One person said “because I care”
Three people said “to have a voice”
Four people said “to get the Tories out”
NO, I didn’t vote in the last election because..
One person said they’re “not interested”
Five people said “I’m too young”
Four people said “because I’m not a British Citizen”
One person said they “hadn’t done enough research yet”
Two people said they “didn’t like any of the parties”
One person said it “does not matter”
One person said “I forgot”
OUR SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS
Funding also provided by: The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust