What if a citizens’ assembly were to design a future Cyprus peace process?

Could a deliberative process, such as a citizens’ assembly, be used to design a future peace process for Cyprus? Could creative practices, such as a pre-assembly interspecies council, help to activate the imagination of members of such an assembly? These questions were at heart of a workshop held in November 2024 at the Home for Cooperation, a community centre located within the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia. This intervention reports on the innovative, design-driven methodology used in the workshop; and on the key insights that it generated around risks and rewards associated with proposing the use of citizens’ assemblies and of creative methods in the Cyprus context.