At this year’s Frontiers of Democracy conference—centered on the theme “Listening and Leading”—we brought the spirit of creative action to life through a Generous Listening Hackathon: a high-energy, hands-on session designed to transform the values of generous listening into scalable, real-world interventions.

Why a hackathon? Because listening, when practiced with presence, courage, curiosity, and generosity, has the power to reshape how we live and lead together. But it’s often invisible, under-practiced, or mistaken for passive silence. We wanted to ask a different kind of civic question: What if listening were treated as infrastructure? A public good? A civic skill?

With that provocation, we challenged participants to design practical, testable ideas that apply the principles of generous listening in specific settings. Teams chose from a range of high-stakes environments—places where listening could unlock trust, healing, or collaboration:

• K–12 schools

• Colleges and universities

• Out-of-school-time programs

• Civic institutions or local governments

• Refugee camps or migrant support programs

• Prisons or justice systems

• Workplaces or unions

• Religious or interfaith communities

• Media or digital platforms

• Environmental justice movements

• Or—create your own!

Teams worked through a structured but open-ended process, crafting proposals that addressed:

• The context and its unique challenges

• The core intervention or idea

• How generous listening would be adapted to fit that space

• A feasible implementation plan

• The hoped-for impact

• And potential barriers—with solutions

Ideas ranged from rituals for listening across religious divides, to workplace practices for building psychological safety, to methods for amplifying refugee voices in policymaking. Many drew inspiration from real-world models—like our Emotional Support Groups for women in post-earthquake Türkiye—while applying their own creative lens.

This wasn’t a panel. It was a space for doing, not just discussing. And what emerged was a diverse, imaginative set of blueprints for how we might make generous listening not just a personal virtue, but a public practice.

We left with ideas to test, questions to pursue, and a growing network of listeners, designers, facilitators, and civic leaders committed to building a more connected, attentive world.