How to organise a local World Transformed style event
Clearly if we’re serious about political education in our movement and beyond we have to do more than annual events centred around Labour Party Conference, as important and brilliant as these are. Although there are values in educating the “converted” there is also a great need to intervene and organise in those areas that have been “left behind”.
This was part of the rationale for organising Derby Transformed, a one day event held in Derby on the 1st of September this year and that took its lead from the brilliant and popular World Transformed. Derby Transformed attracted about 300 people, mainly Labour Party supporters, plus a large team of volunteers and no less than 40 presenters. Here in eight steps I outline what I understand to be the key things to do and think about if you’re interesting in doing a similar event.
1. Understand what your objective is
Political education, sure. But for who and to what end? Derby was the only place to buck the trend in UKIP’s collapse at the local elections this year. More than this, four of the total six seats that Labour lost in 2017 are within an hour’s drive of the city.
Derby also boasts over 3,000 Labour Party members, affiliates and supporters spread over two constituencies, one marginal (Chris Williamson’s) and one safe (Margaret Becket’s). However very few of these people are active in the Party.
Our event was therefore aimed at, on the one hand, some working class voters who have strayed from Labour, while on the other the event was as an initiative intended to mobilise and enthuse our supporters locally.
2. Find a crew to work with
Another reason why we organised this event was a relatively “internal” one: that is, to skill up and strengthen the relatively limited activist base in Derby. I put this point high up the list as it’s arguably the one we did most badly in.
I think there’s always a tension between competent activists getting shit done and empowering others to do things, which can create additional work in the form of support and oversight. It also requires the competent activists to let go a little. In saying this I’m being realistic about the distribution of power and privilege here — political conditions which we as socialists want to change.
In the end, the event was project managed by only a few individuals. Along the way, however, we did a lot that I think lifted the confidence of people and strengthened our bonds as a party; from giving a platform to people with low to no profile but loads to say, to just phone banking members or even handing out flyers.
Don’t be naive: some people aren’t good to work with for personal reasons. Some people, especially activists that are set in their ways, can also be off-putting to the audience you want to reach.
The World Transformed is brilliant because it’s basically a Labour Party event but it doesn’t feel like one. It doesn’t feel like the left from five years ago even, as anyone who is unfortunate to have been around long enough will know. This is incredibly positive, I can’t emphasise that enough. That’s why if whatever marginal grouping or leftist faction want to assert their control over the event don’t let them, that would be my advice. Sometimes you just have to upset a few people.
Early on in planning our event we held a meeting with local activists. Some of the ideas they had were invaluable, but a lot of their emphasis was on putting their brand in the programme and running their own events inside the Transformed one. I’m happy to debate this but personally I think the people we’re trying to reach are put off by most far leftist branding and all its baggage, from crappy newspapers, to wallpaper tables overflowing with flyers, to bizarre revolutionary rhetoric. These activists (and I get on with plenty of them, to be clear) think everything they do is geared towards turning people on, but often the effect they have is the exact opposite.
Nowhere did our event feature any political branding. Like The World Transformed it was implicitly a Labour Party event, but yet it felt open and inclusive. That for me is the right approach.
3. Plan your logistics
How many people are coming and what kind of space will you need? This is all practical stuff that you’ll work out. I don’t have any interesting insights here other than if you’re buying tea bags never, ever, cut corners on quality.
4. Money
This was an obvious stumbling block. Our two sources of funding were trade union branches, from which we raised £2,000 (we just emailed them all, Chris Williamson and other local activists had the contacts), and collection buckets on the day which brought in £500. With an average donation of about £1.60 per person we could’ve collected way more on the door, especially by shaking buckets after each event. However with such a generous contribution from the unions it felt like we didn’t need to.
We got on with planning and promoting the event without the bulk of the money in hand, which was risky but I think seeing that we were serious encouraged union branches to be as generous as they were.
In total I budgeted £2,500 for the whole event (which was neat, as that’s how much we brought in) but in the end we spent just under £2,000. Not bad hey? And far far cheaper than Labour bloody Live ;)
One of our biggest expenses was travel for speakers. Quite a few of the “big names” are obviously avocado smoothie quaffing metropolitans (like myself) living London. I also told the speakers attending that if they depended on speakers’ fees for their income then we’d try to raise it. Two people in total did and we paid £100 for their attendance, which is very much on the low end for a speakers’ fee.
We were lucky that we got the most amazing venue very cheap (that’s an upside of being in Derby). It cost £450, it’s huge and accessible with a PA system, a kitchen and stuff to make a brew.
The other money was spent on flyers, stickers, pizza for people who attended the phone bank, Facebook advertising, free lunch and dinner for the volunteers, some materials and £70 to hire a pub for the after party pub quiz. We even hired an Airbnb for the metropolitan elite who were coming over from London. Now I think about it, how we did all this for £2k was some sort of miracle. (Btw, the remaining £500 will go into future events).
One of the biggest problems we faced was what bank account to use. If you’re doing the event via your local CLP consider using that. If not, perhaps your Momentum group has one set up? Otherwise look to partner with a campaign or group that has.
5. Get a handful of headliners
Big names can pull in a crowd and help with the rest of the programming. Think of your target audience and just contact them or ask people who know them to. Don’t be shy: the kind of people you want are the kind of people who will, or should, be receptive to this kind of thing.
6. Do the rest of the programming
Don’t just box tick, be interesting. Don’t have one thing about how bad austerity is and another on “women’s issues” for example. Really try to think about the questions your target audience are asking and try to pose them.
One thing I learnt in hindsight is that a lot of interesting and more deeply engaging stuff happens in workshops, but if you put them alongside a panel discussion people wont come. If we were to do this again I’d push for sandwiching workshops between bigger panels. Also, as a rule of thumb, you want equally big events on at the same time to avoid everyone going to one and not the other.
That said, in terms of pedagogy I personally think there’s lots of room for experts and political leaders so I’m comfortable with the top table format, but there’s a debate to be had here. What I would say is don’t assume your target audience has all of the information, language and answers, even if they have the experience that allows them to identify with the issue at hand. I think that sometimes education needs to be brought in “from outside” by people who have had the resources to really engage with an issue.
7. Tickets
We set up an Eventbrite page that people could book a free ticket through. This allowed us to keep track of the number attending while avoiding the website scraping off a 2.5% selling fee — tight, I know. You might prefer to sell the tickets up front as a) it ensures you get some cash flow before the event and b) people are more likely to come if they paid for something — we probably should have done this. If you don’t charge for tickets however, in my experience with this and other events you can literally assume only two thirds of the people who registered for a place are actually going to come.
The other great thing about allocating tickets is a lot of people consent to them being contacted by you, so you can remind them of the event and do some follow up.
It’s good to sell tickets in batches (but you have to remember to keep adding more), that way once it shows there are only ten tickets left people will tell their mates to “go get one quick!”. Then when there’s only a handful left you add a new batch. Cheeky!
8. Promotion
In hindsight we should’ve made a website as it’s good to have a landing page for email promotion. You can make pretty slick looking websites as well as buy the URL to boot via Squarespace for about £15 for the URL plus £15 a month for hosting with no contract — so it’s effectively a one off payment.
It really really helps to have a graphic designer on board, which fortunately we did. Although I wish The World Transformed would just lend out their brand as a template to modify. That would be super helpful.
In the end we used the Facebook and Eventbrite page for online promotion and got people like Chris Williamson and Ash Sarkar to champion it. I made a video with Ash but a standard “come to this event” promo video rarely does well. We gave £40 of the union’s hard earned cash to that bastard Mark Zuckerberg and advertised the video to people on Facebook who we wanted to reach (there are lots of options on Facebook for targeting, foremost will be where people live and what they’re interested in). This ad resulted in 256 click throughs to the Eventbrite page, at 16p a click. Kinda pricey as these things go but whatever. We also put out regular content on the Facebook page and encouraged people in our networks, especially locally, to share it, some of which did quite well.
On top of this we got all our trade union sponsors to put out an email and in my capacity as the political education officer for Derby North CLP I asked our secretary to email all the Labour Members in Derby.
But listen: barely anyone opens promotional emails these days — do you? That’s why phone banking is key. Phone banking is also helpful in reaching those pesky people who stay away from social media and probably have radiant mental health as a result.
We only did one three hour phone banking session. The data was supplied by our CLP secretary, or alternatively you can contact your local Momentum group who should have an elected data manager (and Momentum’s contact list should in theory be low hanging fruit). I estimate that we called about 200 people and actually spoke to about 40. Of that, about one in three were very interested and likely to come. A mistake we made was not to do way more of this as it can be really fruitful speaking directly to our target audience. Big regret.
Finally, we also plastered the city in stickers and put up posters.
8. Legacy
We wanted to keep those who attended Derby Transformed plugged into the party more generally. That’s why at every opportunity we mentioned canvassing events related to a big community survey that Derby Labour Party are conducting, headed up by the Labour Group’s brilliant new leader Lisa Eldret.
We failed to collect data from the event itself via sign up sheets, though the thought of typing up all that handwriting makes me squirm. We do have the Eventbrite data, however.
In terms of the impact of the event, one thing I think we underestimated was the affect it would have on those most plugged-in party activists locally. I think among some of those less convinced by the Corbyn surge we won a lot of respect: deeds speak louder than words sometimes comrades, and the energy of the event was infectious. Also the sharing of ideas, the discussion around campaign strategies and the building of networks are all positive.
Looking forward, I’m personally really inspired by the work that the Chorlton Socialist Club have been doing, holding regular events rather than one off bigish festivals — although I think the one off Transformed event gave us a credible reputation and showed that we’re capable, which will help kick things off more generally.
One of the best bits of the whole day was the socialist pub quiz held by the internet’s most charming man, Michael Walker. This really brought people together. With all that in mind, perhaps what we need to do next in Derby is set up our very own Socialist Club.
