Governing Together
Bridging Divides in Everyday Politics
A companion guide: How to engage with our work
Governing Together is a body of work that explores a worldview – an approach that shifts how we understand our place in the world, how we relate to one another, and how we design, decide, and act. As authors, we come to this work with humility and generative curiosity, rather than a sense of certainty, challenging the belief that we can fully know, define, or have all the answers to complex questions. Our insights come from decades of practical experience on the ground, not from abstract concepts or theories.
This work calls for a particular attitude shift – not only from its authors but from anyone engaging with it. It’s less a ‘rigid framework’ and more a set of conditions or a ‘companion guide’ that invites curiosity, openness, and generosity. Generative curiosity means beginning from a place of genuine openness towards others, adopting a ‘yes, and…’ mindset – a technique borrowed from improvisational theatre that helps build on each other’s ideas rather than block them. As part of this, we welcome being challenged, along with new ideas and perspectives, to help build upon this work as a collective endeavour.
This approach draws on practices from contemplative traditions, some of which invite us to make meaning for ourselves. Rather than offering fixed or rigid interpretations of this work, words and ideas are meant to open up space for personal resonance and allow new understandings and ways of seeing to emerge. Meaning arises in interaction with the material, and this process calls for proactive engagement on both sides.
We recognise that this way of engaging contrasts with a more familiar Western tradition of a focus on solutions, often rooted in modernist and Enlightenment frames of reference. That tradition values certainty, linear progress, and clear answers and set briefs – often before we even fully understand the problem. While that approach has brought important advances, it can also limit openness to ambiguity, uncertainty, and relational complexity. Governing Together invites a complementary posture – one that holds space for ongoing questioning and co-creation over time – being responsive or attuned to what arises in real time.
We don’t always have the perfect words or terms to describe what we’re discovering here. Sometimes we only understand something by circling around its edges – and that’s okay. Our work and reflections embrace a high degree of emergence, where meaning and clarity unfold over time, shaped by relationships, patterns, and insights that surface throughout the process. In the thinking and practice we offer, we will surely make assumptions and mistakes – and we see that as a healthy part of the process. We are open to being challenged, because we believe that is where the seeds of transformation and innovation live: in dialogue, in friction, in difference, and not only in shared but also in compatible visions and ideas.
– Gyorgyi Galik, Governing Together (2025)
Why local governments can’t tackle the polycrisis alone: The urgency of governing together
Local governments are on the frontlines of today’s biggest challenges – climate change, widening inequality, rising social fragmentation, and more. But no city – and no single sector, organisation, or actor – can address these complex challenges alone.
Regardless of our core beliefs and ideologies, one thing is clear: behind every successful transition lies a key ingredient – collective action across divides. Much of our public effort still focuses on the visible levers of change – policies, infrastructure, technology and services. While these matter deeply, there is another, often overlooked, site of transformation that decision-makers must pay attention to: the psychosocial dimensions of change – how human behaviour is shaped, how mindsets and attitudes form, and how motivation and willingness to act are fostered and sustained. These are the more invisible forces that influence whether people show up as proactive members of their communities, neighbourhoods, and societies. This is what we call everyday politics.
What do we mean by ‘everyday politics’?
We’re talking about the informal, everyday spaces and places where people – through daily encounters with others – make sense of what’s happening around them and shape their worldviews on critical societal and political topics: conversations at dinner tables, group chats, lifestyle spaces, neighbourhood events, and workplace water cooler moments. These spaces shape what people believe is fair, possible, threatening, or worth fighting for. They influence whether people are motivated to take part in civic life – or opt out entirely.
These are the sites where the soft infrastructures of our society are developed: the web of relationships, and the quality of the dynamics within them, and the tools and processes that allow them to exist and improve. These dynamics can foster trust, mutual respect, humility, and kindness, allowing shared or compatible meanings to emerge – making collective action possible in the first place. Or, they can stifle change completely. If local governments want to foster legitimacy, participation, and shared responsibility, this is where the groundwork begins.
At Dark Matter Labs, we’ve been researching this topic by working directly with city governments, community leaders, researchers, and civil society partners on the ground. Our findings suggest that building the individual skills, organisational capabilities, and institutional capacity for collective sensemaking – and strengthening relationships – is not a nice-to-have, peripheral task. It’s the new bottom line: the core conditions for addressing the complex, intersecting challenges that cities and societies face today and in the years to come.
The real crisis: we’re struggling to make sense together
Today’s problems aren’t just technical – they’re deeply social, psychological, cultural, moral, and relational. Tackling climate transitions, housing shortages, or public health crises requires us to work together across departments, sectors, industries, and communities. But that kind of collaboration doesn’t happen without trust, humility, shared understanding, and the belief that change is both necessary and possible.
And right now, many people don’t feel or trust that possibility. Systems change is hard – for the simple reason that systems are good at resisting change and staying exactly as they are.
Instead, people are increasingly overwhelmed, sceptical, or disengaged. Many feel paralysed by conflicting information and unsure of what they can do to address any of the complex challenges. They feel their voices don’t matter. They experience participation fatigue and resentment toward governments, institutions, and elites. They’re unsure who to trust or how to engage. This breakdown in collective sensemaking makes it even harder for cities and local governments to mobilise the very collective action they so urgently need.
We work closely with many local governments and often see them asking versions of the following questions:
How do we make better decisions together, especially in uncertain times?
Who decides what we consider a ‘better’ decision?
How do we engage people meaningfully, not just performatively?
How do we rebuild trust so people want to participate again?
But many responses from decision-makers still focus too narrowly on individuals, trying to ‘nudge’ better behaviour or raise awareness through campaigns. While gamification and campaigns can be useful tools for education and awareness – when applied thoughtfully and with deep contextual understanding– they often overlook the systemic barriers that constrain people’s choices. Too many interventions still treat individuals as isolated units of change, missing a crucial insight: we are inherently relational beings, shaped by our closest social circles, communities, and environments. We need to design interventions that reflect this. Educating people alone will not necessarily lead to sustained change if people remain embedded in systems that lock them into certain entrenched social practices and patterns of behaviour.
Why this matters for cities and local governments
Even when local governments invest in quality participatory processes – like citizens’ assemblies or town halls – people don’t show up as blank slates. Their motivations, frustrations, hopes, and beliefs about what's possible are already shaped both by their daily, everyday experiences and by the people they trust: family members, colleagues, neighbours, and online communities.
If we want formal participation to be meaningful, we need to take seriously what happens in the everyday. This means understanding:
Where people are already talking about the issues that matter to them – whether it’s in WhatsApp groups, online messaging boards, pubs or sports clubs.
How everyday conversations reflect people’s level of understanding of critical social issues, and how jargon-heavy, exclusive, or overly technical communication can stand in the way.
What shapes people’s trust (or mistrust) in institutions, and how this is deeply rooted in past experiences of being seen and heard – or excluded and devalued.
How relationships, narratives, and norms shape people’s sense of agency: what they believe they can influence, who they think change is for, who they think has the power to enact change, and whether they believe participating is worth it.
Our confidence in the possibility of change grows when we see others taking action alongside us, demonstrating that change is achievable, together. Collective will is forged or fractured in everyday political spaces. When governments ignore these informal spaces, they miss the early signals of civic disengagement, polarisation, and disinformation, as well as the very root causes of why well-intended initiatives fail to take hold.
Governing Together: Our launch and next steps
This is why we are launching Governing Together: to better understand and strengthen the everyday foundations of collective action. This body of work reflects two years of research and collaboration with practitioners inside and outside Dark Matter Labs.
Governing Together aims to reimagine governance as something built with and for relationships. The first phase is both a reflection on our journey and a call to action for others to join us in shaping more relational, collectively intelligent, and resilient ecosystems. Through a series of booklets and practical case stories, we aim to share our reflections openly for others to use and build upon.
These materials, being launched today along with additional insights and resources in the coming months, present the principles, practical approaches, strategies, and envisioned outcomes of the Governing Together worldview. They highlight how shared responsibility and collective agency can be nurtured across the full ecosystem of actors in our communities, cities, and societies: governments, public institutions, local businesses, industries, corporations, and community groups alike.
Together, we aim to co-create a practical roadmap for cities and local governments and their ecosystems to foster trust, motivation, and conditions for sustained collective action. This means identifying key principles, everyday practices, and governance structures that guide how decisions are made, problems are defined, and priorities are set across public, private, and civil society actors.
To translate principles into action, we are focusing on five key areas:
1. Sharing practical city stories
We will showcase inspiring examples from local governments and cities worldwide that demonstrate how strengthening relational capacity and building (a) collective of intelligence(s) has become the new bottom line. These examples show how this relational governance approach can, even with limited funding, deliver tangible benefits such as job creation, local economic growth, community resilience, and civic pride across communities, local businesses, institutions, and in wider ecosystems of actors. In many cases, more meaningful outcomes were achieved – tangibly improving people’s wellbeing and sense of community – highlighting that relational and collective intelligence capacity are essential foundations, not optional extras.
2. Cultivating an ecosystem of practice
By collaborating across organisations and partner networks, we will amplify promising approaches, co-develop new ideas and proposals, and convene and connect like-minded practitioners to build a supportive ecosystem around relational governance.
3. Telling the story visually
Through animated storytelling, we will show how shifts in governance can bridge divides, reduce polarisation and social fragmentation, and unlock collective action, drawing on insights co-developed with practitioners and thinkers.
4. Building open resources and tools
We will launch a web platform as a growing repository of open resources, featuring interviews with thought-leaders, practitioner conversations, and an evolving glossary for shared understanding. These materials are designed to help local governments, civil society organisations, and communities adopt and adapt relational approaches in their own contexts.
5. Grounding the work in local governments
Working directly with local governments, we will test and refine relational capacity audits and other co-developed services and tools to build institutional capacity and shape internal processes accordingly.
Together, these efforts will help embed the Governing Together approach into governance processes, supporting inclusive and adaptive decision-making aligned with long-term wellbeing, security, and resilience.
A call to action
The future of governance won’t be built in isolation or by any single actor. It will emerge from how we choose to relate to one another and build trust. Its foundations are laid in the everyday spaces where people work, connect, and gather. We invite city leaders, practitioners, community organisers, and institutions to join us: share your stories, test these tools, collaborate on new approaches, and help us grow this ecosystem. Whether you are working to rebuild civic trust, strengthen community relationships, improve participatory processes, or design for long-term systems change, we are keen to connect. Together, we can build a new ethic of governance – one that turns collective responsibility into collective action.
Get in touch via hello@governing-together.org to share your work, reflections, or to explore opportunities.
This work is led by Györgyi Gálik and Ryan Bellinson, with thanks to Alexandra Bekker for her foundational contributions to our strategic and conceptual framing. It has been developed in collaboration with Dark Matter colleagues Anahat Kaur and Gurden Batra, for their incredible visual design work, and Marcial Silva Mercado, for his rigour in better understanding just transitions.
A huge thank you also goes to Dark Matter Labs and many of our colleagues—including Prateek Shankar, Zehra Zaidi, Carolina Ribeiro, Joost Beunderman, and our small but relentless NetZeroCities team, as well as Shu Yang Lin, Vlad Afanasiev, Simon Höher, and Calvin Po, Indy Johar – for providing critical reflections; and to our external collaborators, including Kunyalala Ndlovu, Eleri Thomas, Sabina Mohideen, Gabrielle Beran, the Governance Futures Network, and Jayne Engle.
The foundational ideas of Everyday Politics within Governing Together were supported by funding from Viable Cities and NetZeroCities, the European Cities Mission Platform [hyperlink].
We are grateful to our incredible animation crew from Hungary – Petra Lilla Marjai, Janka Feiner, Daniel Huszar, and Rozi Mako – for developing our animation series on the things that keep us awake at night.
Last but not least, we extend our thanks to colleagues from cities participating in the EU Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission – including Pécs, Budapest, Miskolc, Cork, Porto, Trikala, Helsinki, Stockholm, and many others – with whom we have been working directly. Their questions and contributions have provided invaluable practical insights, reflected in Governing Together as well as in forthcoming publications and outputs to be shared in the coming weeks and months.
Please visit our website on https://governing-together.org/
And get in touch on hello@governing-together.org