Elections — particularly Presidential Elections — are big in America. You can feel the rhythm of the season, as political yard signs go up, TV commercials become political ads, and phone calls turn out to be robocalls. For many, elections feel very present in our lives. Then Election Day passes, and we more or less return to our lives.

At PACE, we think a lot about the ways that Americans civically engage. In fact, we developed a Civic Engagement Primer to help define the term, and it identifies thirteen civic practices that make up civic engagement — only one of which is voting. And yet, voting and elections seem to be a major way we engage and measure engagement.

Civic Season — a new effort from Made By Us, Civics Unplugged, and over 100 partners including PACE Members National Archives Foundation and Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library.  Launching today, Civic Season’s goal is to create a new type of civic tradition, and it gives Americans another season — beyond election season — to engage. Civic Season runs from June 14 — July 5, 2021, and that is not by mistake. As they share: “The 4th of July commemorates the moment when a new generation boldly articulated the values of a new nation: freedom, equality, justice, rights and opportunity. Juneteenth, celebrated just a few weeks earlier, reminds us that people in America have fought to make those values a reality over hundreds of years — and we still have work to do. An annual Civic Season, bookended by these two significant celebrations, mobilizes us all to connect with our past, take action in the present, and shape the future, through activities and events in our neighborhoods, cities, towns and social spaces.”

The team of partners behind Civic Season have coordinated hundreds of ways to engage, from reading and exploring to creating and contributing to discussing and connecting. Particularly focused on getting 18–30 year olds civically engaged, activities can be filtered by area of interest.

Read the full article about Civic Season from Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) at Medium.