​Out of Hand, the Atlanta-based social impact arts organization, is marking 25 years of using theater to drive dialogue and social change with its 2026–2027 anniversary season. Since 2001, the organization has paired original productions with facilitated dialogue and community partnerships to engage people across differences on issues from racial equity and public health to housing, democracy, and belonging. The anniversary season centers this dialogue work through its Equitable Dinners model, its living-room "Shows in Homes," and its We Hold These Truths series of short plays on American democracy and identity, each designed to turn performance into structured community conversation. For the dialogue and deliberation field, Out of Hand offers a distinctive, arts-based approach to the shared goal of building empathy and turning conversation into civic action, closely aligned with NCDD's mission.

​Everyday Democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to building power for multiracial democracy in local communities, is offering its signature Multipartial Facilitation Training for Fall 2026. The four-session virtual course teaches experienced facilitators to engage multiple perspectives and balance power in dialogues and community conversations, moving beyond neutral moderation toward an equity-focused, multipartial approach. Through role-plays, small-group activities, and co-facilitated mock sessions with real-time feedback, participants build and refine the skills needed to lead inclusive conversations in their own communities and organizations. For the dialogue and deliberation field, the training offers a rigorous, hands-on path to strengthening the facilitation capacities that make equitable, power-aware community engagement possible, squarely aligned with NCDD's mission.

​DemocracyNext, the democratic innovation nonprofit led by founder Claudia Chwalisz, has released Deliberative Muscles & AI, a paper examining how deliberation technology can strengthen rather than erode citizens' capacities to deliberate. Written by Chwalisz, Sammy McKinney, Jorim Theuns, and Eugene Yi, the paper reframes deliberative assemblies not as recommendation-producing machines but as spaces where people build the cognitive, relational, and dispositional capacities democratic life depends on. Its central argument is that whether AI helps or harms deliberation is a matter of design, and it offers a typology of seven "deliberative muscles" alongside a practical framework for judging whether a given tool strengthens or substitutes for each one. For the dialogue and deliberation field, the paper is a rigorous guide for practitioners, funders, and technologists weighing how to bring AI into participatory work without hollowing out its human core.

​The OECD's Public Governance Directorate, in collaboration with the Bertelsmann Stiftung, has released Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Citizen Participation, a report examining how AI tools can support and strengthen participatory and deliberative processes. Drawing on 50 real-world use cases across 22 countries, the report offers a typology of nine AI applications, from sense-making and translation to facilitation and moderation, that help governments and practitioners navigate an emerging and fast-moving field. It pairs this practical framework with a clear-eyed analysis of the risks, including exclusion, loss of nuance, and overreliance, and it insists throughout that AI should support rather than replace skilled facilitators and genuine citizen engagement. For the dialogue and deliberation community, the report is a timely resource for thinking rigorously about where technology can deepen participation and where human judgment must remain at the center of democratic practice.

​NCDD has announced NCDD2027, the 10th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, taking place May 18–20, 2027, with pre-conference events on May 17, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. Building on more than two decades of convening the field, the conference is being intentionally designed not just to exchange ideas but to strengthen the connective infrastructure linking practitioners, organizations, and communities across sectors. Attendees will have opportunities to learn emerging practices, cultivate relationships, and spark new collaborations, with the gathering co-created alongside local Chicago leaders and a growing group of Conference Partners. For the NCDD network and the broader civic engagement field, NCDD2027 offers a strategic moment to deepen relationships and build collective capacity to meet today's complex democratic challenges.

Utah State University's Environmental Dispute Resolution (EDR) Program, in partnership with the USU School of Social Sciences and Heravi Peace Institute, is offering its 2026 Collaboration Certificate Course, a seven-session online training in the art and science of collaborative problem-solving and conflict resolution. Led by EDR Director Danya Rumore and Associate Director Emily Gaines-Crockett, the course combines lectures, case studies, peer sharing, and simulation exercises to build practical skills in convening, facilitating, and sustaining multi-party collaborative processes. Participants gain techniques for identifying when a situation is ready for collaboration and for leading stakeholders through conflict toward shared solutions, with graduates invited into an ongoing Collaborative Leadership Network. For dialogue and deliberation practitioners, the course offers a rigorous, hands-on path to strengthening the facilitation and consensus-building capacities at the heart of NCDD's mission.

The Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University recently facilitated a deliberative process with the City of New Westminster's Community Advisory Assembly, Canada's first ongoing deliberative mini-public tasked with advising municipal staff and Council. Working with 36 randomly selected members chosen to reflect the city's demographics, the Centre guided the Assembly through a structured learning-and-deliberation model to develop recommendations for New Westminster's first Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Plan. The process paired technical climate information from City staff with residents' lived experience, showing how facilitated dialogue can turn a complex, policy-heavy subject into actionable community guidance. By demonstrating that a demographically representative body can meaningfully shape climate policy, this work offers a replicable model for practitioners seeking to deepen public participation and strengthen deliberative democracy at the local level.

​Project Pericles' Deliberative Dialogue Module is a set of open, adaptable teaching tools that help college faculty connect course content to real civic questions and guide students through structured deliberation on public issues. Built on the Kettering Foundation's understanding of deliberative dialogue as a way to think together rather than to debate or force consensus, the module frames classroom conversation as preparation for civic and electoral participation. It includes a faculty facilitator guide, a library of sixteen discussion topics spanning disciplines from computer science to public health, and guidance on crafting non-partisan issue stances that open multiple perspectives rather than collapsing into an us-versus-them split. The approach draws on evaluated workshop models and centers skills the dialogue field values, including active listening, critical thinking, and finding common ground across difference. By treating every discipline as a doorway to public questions, the module extends deliberative practice into higher education in a way that speaks directly to NCDD's mission of strengthening democracy through better public conversation.

​"Facilitation 101: A Beginner's Guide to Dialogue and Deliberation" distills a Democracy Resource Hub training led by Keiva Hummel, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, into a practical resource for people hosting community conversations across difference. The guide draws a clear working distinction between dialogue, which builds understanding through listening, and deliberation, which weighs options and tradeoffs to inform decisions, and it treats facilitation as the craft of guiding either process well. It is organized around NCDD's Engagement Streams Framework, helping organizers match their purpose, whether exploration, conflict transformation, decision making, or collaborative action, to the right kind of conversation, and it offers concrete tools including a simple opening-to-closing dialogue structure, question-crafting guidance, and a preparation checklist. Written for civic hub builders, librarians, local leaders, and first-time facilitators, it lowers the barrier to entry without pretending facilitation is simple. Its emphasis on inclusive design, impartiality over false neutrality, and follow-through connects squarely to NCDD's mission of strengthening democracy through better public conversation.