Germany’s Basic Law celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2024; the peaceful revolution happened 35 years ago. Two anniversaries that offer an opportunity to spend a year looking at freedom in all its facets. The BMBF Science Year 2024 – Freedom is dedicated to the value and meaning of freedom, casting a spotlight on it in its different dimensions and in different contexts. The TUD is participating with the project "Democratic freedom – achieve, experience, maintain" and invites 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. TUD uses various science communication formats to reach out into (urban) society and engage with citizens on questions of democratic freedom. The focus is on three thematic pillars:

• "Experience Democratic Freedom": Together with Zuhause in Prohlis e.V., the TUD is organizing a hands-on festival in the Dresden district of Prohlis. Diverse participatory and cultural formats for all age groups encourage visitors to engage with aspects of democratic society such as equality and solidarity.
• "Asserting democratic freedom": The focus is 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 will mark its 35th anniversary in Germany in 2024, is associated with very different personal experiences in its social upheavals and political changes. Academic events that approach this period from different disciplines will be supplemented by formats that explicitly focus on the personal experiences of citizens.

A social media campaign on the topic of science and freedom will accompany these three pillars. The campaign will include a fact-checking format, "Freedom Facts" and street surveys. The videos will be published on the TUD's social media channels.