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Status: activeType: 🤝 practiceCountry: Australia Website: folio.org.au
Status active
Type 🤝 practice
Country Australia
Website folio.org.au
Contact connect@folio.org.au
RSS feed folio.org.au/events/RSS
Concepts Deliberative Democracy Collective Intelligence
Last activity 2026-08-09 manual
Confirmed active via own website: past events list runs to 29 Jul 2026

Folio Collective

Folio Collective (trading as "Folio") is a Melbourne-based, member-supported forum that runs a recurring program of small-group public conversations — "Folio Conversations" — pairing diverse citizens with invited expert "Conversation Leaders" to discuss civic and democratic issues.1 Folio describes its purpose plainly: "Democracy evolves one conversation at a time. Let's have better conversations, more often."1 It positions itself as an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit social enterprise that exists "to strengthen democracy through connected, citizen-led dialogue."5

Format

Folio Conversations are deliberately small and capped: seats are "strictly limited to ensure that everyone has a meaningful opportunity to participate," with attendees encouraged to "bring their curiosity, actively listen, and share their perspectives and experiences."2 Each session pairs a themed civic or social question with one or more Conversation Leaders — subject-matter experts, practitioners, or advocates — for structured, small-group dialogue rather than a lecture-and-Q&A format.

Recent programming has run in themed clusters, including Energy Shift (the renewable energy transition's impact on regional communities), State of Nature (biodiversity and conservation), Democratic Crossroads (the 2023 Voice referendum and civic participation), Election 2025 (nonpartisan analysis of the federal election), and AI Futures (AI governance).2

Membership and governance

Folio operates on a two-tier paid membership (Level 1 and Level 2, priced by expected in-person attendance frequency), plus casual/guest access to individual events.3 Members get first access and discounted tickets, an online member portal, and voting rights over "the future direction of the Folio Community."3 The organisation is run by a small operating team (Conversation Program Manager, Community Engagement Manager, Finance Manager, Marketing and Communications Manager) reporting to a volunteer Board, which Folio states should reflect "the diversity we want to see participating in our events" — explicitly welcoming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and people of every ethnicity, faith, ability, culture, language, age, gender identity, and sexual orientation as board candidates.4

Why it's on our radar

Folio sits in similar territory to DOD's own mission — nonpartisan, citizen-facing public dialogue on how society and government should work — but pursues it through a recurring in-person conversation series rather than a governance-design or advocacy focus. Past programming has covered accountability (Robodebt), electoral representation, referendum literacy (the Voice), and government AI policy, all squarely inside the Democracy Landscape's remit.2

See also

  1. "Folio Collective Limited — Home", accessed 9 August 2026. ↩↩

  2. "Folio Collective Limited — Events", accessed 9 August 2026. ↩↩↩

  3. "Folio Collective Limited — Join us", accessed 9 August 2026. ↩↩

  4. "The Folio Team", accessed 9 August 2026. ↩

  5. "State of Nature - Have we fallen out of love with nature?", Folio Collective event page, accessed 9 August 2026. ↩

History