Science Year 2024 – Freedom
Germany’s Basic Law celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024; the peaceful revolution happened 35 years ago. Two anniversaries that offered an opportunity to spend a year looking at freedom in all its facets. The BMBF Science Year 2024 – Freedom was dedicated to the value and meaning of freedom, casting a spotlight on it in its different dimensions and in different contexts. The TUD was participating with the project "Democratic freedom – achieve, experience, maintain" and invited to join in with a variety of offers and provides a space for exchange between science and society.
Informed citizens are a crucial prerequisite for a resilient and vibrant democracy. Science plays an important role here because it formulates proposals for solutions to social challenges and provides a sound basis for political decisions. For the project, TUD used various science communication formats to reach out into (urban) society and engaged with citizens on questions of democratic freedom. The focus was on three thematic pillars:
- "Experience Democratic Freedom": Together with Zuhause in Prohlis e.V., the TUD organed a hands-on festival in the Prohlis district of Dresden. Diverse participatory and cultural formats for all age groups encouraged visitors to engage with aspects of democratic society such as equality and solidarity.
- "Asserting democratic freedom": The focus was on an educational program for students that aims to look at freedom of expression and its challenges and to learn how to deal with anti-democratic statements.
- "Achieving democratic freedom": The Peaceful Revolution, which marked its 35th anniversary in Germany in 2024, is associated with very different personal experiences in its social upheavals and political changes. Events approached this period from different disciplines.
A social media campaign on the topic of science and freedom accompanied these three pillars. The campaign included a fact-checking format, "Freedom Facts" and a street survey. The videos were published on the TUD's social media channels.
