Democracy is a habit that needs to be trained. In 2017, the Danish organisation We Do Democracy turned this idea into a methodology called Democracy Fitness. 

The format consists of 10 training sessions, each lasting 30 minutes, focusing on a separate skill — or "muscle" — such as listening, finding compromise, putting oneself in another person's shoes and so on.

Democracy Fitness works through experience: participants experience a situation where a particular "muscle" is used, then collectively reflect on the exercise afterwards. The methodology is used in schools, municipalities, and workplaces in Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, and other countries. 

The BRIDGE project team — Oleksandra Keudel, Tetiana Terletska, Illia Tkachenko, and Kerstin Lücker — is also learning the Democracy Fitness methodology. Following a series of training sessions, the team has already started integrating this approach into its work.

One such training session took place during the third meeting of the Deliberative Democracy Lab, where participants trained their "compromise muscle".

"Democracy is a culture. And culture exists only when it is embodied through practices and symbols in everyday life," Illia Tkachenko shared as his takeaway after the training.