Remembering our collective agency as Earth citizens with Jon Alexander

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Code Red

DCU Institute for Climate and Society

13 episodes

1 week ago

Code Red is a climate change podcast from the Institute for Climate and Society at Dublin City University, Ireland. The series looks at how the worlds of policy, politics, the media, the arts, and other sectors have responded to climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. Code Red features an interesting and diverse mix of guests from academia, policy, the cultural industries and civil society. Series host: Dr Dave Robbins Series 3 producer & editor: Louise Romain Series 1&2 producer: Monica Hayes Sound for series 1&2: Eoin Campbell, Damien Hickey. With thanks to the DCU School of Communications

Society & Culture

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Society & Culture

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Remembering our collective agency as Earth citizens with Jon Alexander

Code Red

42 minutes 4 seconds

2 weeks ago

Remembering our collective agency as Earth citizens with Jon Alexander

Jon is the author of ‘CITIZENS: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us’ and dedicates himself to sharing about the emergence of a Citizen Future. As a public speaker and a strategist, he supports leaders who understand the scale of the transformation we need and who are willing to play their part, and he plays a key role as a connector between institutions, community groups and social movements.

In this episode, Jon first discusses his career transition from advertising to co-founding the New Citizen Project with Irenie Ekkeshis in 2014, a consultancy aimed at transforming the societal role of individuals from consumers to engaged citizens.

He explores the concept of citizenship as an active practice rather than a static status, emphasizing the importance of collective intelligence and local community actions in addressing major issues like climate change and biodiversity loss.

Jon advocates for participatory democracy and deeper, more inclusive narratives that validate and platform community efforts, such as the wind energy project in Lawrence Weston, Bristol. He provides various international examples such as Taiwan’s COVID response and Norway’s crowdsourced investment strategies, where leaders embrace collective agency.

The discussion also touches on the potential of small yet significant shifts in narrative and policy to mobilize public engagement and trust.

Jon is also a member of the Global Advisor Network of the ⁠⁠Apolitical Foundation⁠⁠, where he led extensive work on Democratic Innovation. He is also on the Advisory Council of ⁠⁠DemocracyNext⁠⁠, an organisation he helped found as one of the original Strategic Advisors, and on the Leadership Council of the ⁠⁠Democracy and Culture Foundation⁠⁠. He is also a Fellow of the ⁠⁠Young Foundation⁠⁠, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester, and an Associate at the Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

Recorded at the Earth Rising Festival 2025, IMMA, Dublin.

Host: Dr Dave Robbins

Editor & Producer: Louise Romain

Music credits: Resurgence by Simon Folwar; Zenith by Shane Mckenna

YouTube clip: ‘How we got a wind turbine’ by Ambition Lawrence Weston

Intro and outro: Like Flying by Danijel Zambo