Teaching Democracy to young adults — the Tienskip project
Tienskip is a programme for young people between 16 and 23 who want to understand how democracy really works — and what role they can play in it. Not from a textbook. From life. I designed and built the platform, and helped shape how it communicates.
Why this project
Most civic education is dry. It explains how the system works without ever asking young people how they feel about it, or what they'd change. Tienskip starts from the opposite assumption: that young people already have opinions, and that the job is to give those opinions structure, language, and a way forward.
The team came to me with strong content and a clear sense of what they didn't want: something that looked like a government website or a school portal. They wanted something honest and a little rough around the edges. Something that felt like the programme itself.
"Most civic education explains how the system works without asking young people how they feel about it."
— Tjerk DijkstraDesigning for the real users
The audience is 16 to 23. That's a wide range with very different expectations. A 16-year-old in secondary school and a 23-year-old doing an internship are both in the programme, but their relationship to authority, institutions, and language is completely different.
I ran sessions with the team to understand what the platform actually needed to do: explain the programme clearly, build trust with sceptical young people, and give facilitators a tool they could actually use.
The build
The site is built from scratch — no CMS, no template. Fast, accessible, easy to update. The visual language is deliberately bold: high contrast, strong typography, no stock photography. Every image on the site is either from an actual session or commissioned.
I also pushed back on the copy. The first drafts were too formal — the kind of language institutions default to when they're worried about being misunderstood. We rewrote almost everything together, out loud, asking: "Would a 17-year-old trust this sentence?"
"We rewrote almost everything together, asking: would a 17-year-old trust this sentence?"
— Tjerk DijkstraThe result is a site that feels direct. No jargon, no softening. It tells you exactly what the programme is, why it matters, and how to join. That's it.