Making Change Happen: Everything you need to know about campaigning in February
Last month, I started the first in what I hope will be a regular blog rounding up what’s going on in the world of campaigning and social change.
So here’s the campaign launches, wins, tactics, podcasts, blogs, events and more from February.
New campaigns
With scandals about social media often in the news, I’ve long wondered why children’s charities haven’t been running higher profile campaigns to generate public support for action. But in February,the NSPCC started to mobilise the public to get behind their calls to tame the Wild West Web. Meanwhile Jameela Jamil launched a change.org petition calling on social media to stop promoting diet products.
Other new campaigns up and running include Asthma UK’s attempt to end prescription charges for people with asthma and the Trussell Trust’s call to end the five week wait for Universal Credit. And Which? have relaunched their campaign with the Federation of Small Businesses to protect cash.
#Winninghere
The #FreeSallyChallen campaign saw a significant victory as she won her appeal to have her murder conviction quashed.
And in another legal win, the Stansted 15 received suspended sentences or community orders.
The Money & Mental Health Policy Institute once again showed what savvy campaigners they are with a win for their #StopTheCharge campaign as the BMA committed to ending GPs charging people with mental health problems for the form they need to get.
After 3 years of campaigning and a PMB from Emma Lewell-Buck MP, the Government announced plans to introduce an official measure of how often low-income families across the UK skip meals or go hungry because they cannot afford to buy enough food.
At a local level, there was a win for organisations campaigning on bailiff reform as Newham Council announced it won’t send out enforcement officers to collect unpaid money in the new financial year — and a win for refugee groups as Wiltshire Council committed to welcome up to 100 refugee children over the next 10 years, as part of the national Safe Passage Our Turn campaign.
Hope Not Hate celebrated the Facebook decision to remove Tommy Robinson’s account from their platform. And Which? got a win for its scams campaign as banks agreed to refund victims of fraud.
Meanwhile for a deeper dive into how a recent campaign win happened, Matt Zarb-Cousin has a rundown on the FOBT win.
In focus 1: Yoof
Campaigners cannot fail to have been inspired by the Youth Strike for Climate that commanded the airwaves in February. This piece nicely captures its global impact.
As politicians have struggled to understand and dismissed young climate activists (see Senator Dianne Feinstein in the US or the Flemish environment minister), lots of other good stuff has been written exploring the new uprising. Take George Monbiot’s piece advising on the lessons from previous protest movements and Mobilisation Lab’s explainer on the Sunrise Movement.
Quite a few pieces have pointed to the importance of the Parkland activists in inspiring a new generation of campaigners with this Guardian piece giving a quick overview of the March for Our Lives’ theory of change and Teen Vogue giving a good summary of how youth activism has changed in the States since Parkland.
But its not all about young activists. As Polly Toynbee points out, perhaps its older women that we should be looking to to bring a change.
Strategy and tactics
February means Valentines Day and there were no shortage of campaigns using 14th Feb as an opportunity to promote their cause. Oxfam love bombed Aldi, calling on it to put its policy to help protect the people who produce its food into practice. The Campaign to End Loneliness set up post boxes in cities across the country to send messages to people who would not normally receive a valentine. And the Climate Coalition released this video.
Meanwhile earlier in February, civil society took to Twitter as part of #ReclaimSocial, a campaign to spread all the good work charities are doing.
A few campaigns found ways to make their causes more visible, including Greenpeace who delivered a sculpture made from over 2,500 plastic bottles to DEFRA. Protesters calling for abortion rights to be extended to Northern Ireland made their point as 28 women carried suitcases across Westminster Bridge to symbolise the number of women who travel outside Northern Ireland each week for an abortion. Each suitcase contained names of the 62,000 people who signed the petition.
The Taking Control bailiff campaign brought their issue to life with an online map of stories heard on the front line of debt advice. And Which? brought its campaign on cash to life with this great video.
And in one of my favourite tactics of the last month, kids handed out fake parking tickets as part of the campaign to tackle air pollution.
Campaign resources
Our data our selves has released a guide to activism on social media.
And NetChange has published a handy range of tools and platforms used by organisations that run distributed organising systems.
The B word …
We couldn’t not mention Brexit, could we? And you’ve got to love this feature in the Guardian on the four people behind the Led By Donkeys billboards. A particularly successful articulation of this tactic was this and then this.
Blogs
What are the campaign blogs to read from the last month? A few that I’ve been struck by.
SMK’s Sue Tibballs on why seeing the big picture is a key habit of effective changemakers. Save the Children campaign boss, Kirsty McNeill, sets out the question that campaigners hate to answer. Oxfam’s Duncan Green crowd sourced people’s disastrous campaign failures. And here’s my response to the blog with a few examples of my own cock ups.
Analytical Activism has a great blog on building a local campaign plan. Act Build Change have an interesting post on the tyranny of structurelessness. Oh, and February means the Super Bowl, so Tom Baker wrote what campaigners can learn from American Football.
After recent campaign successes with Private Members Bills, Hawkins Laxton have written up all you need to know about the tactic. One Riot have collated the charities with the most mentions in Parliament in the last year. Sticking with politics, I like this behind the scenes look at how Hansard happens. And I wrote a blog on what campaigners should think about when engaging with the new Independent Group.
Finally, there’s a fab blog from one of the graduates of Scope’s great “Scope for Change” programme.
Podcasts
Jim Coe’s got a new Advocacy Iceberg podcast, interviewing Tom Pollard about his Demos report. One that I missed in January — 100 Campaigns that Changed the World interviewed Amnesty International boss, Kumi Naidoo. And if you missed the Losing Control conference in February, there’s an interview with Maff Potts, Director at Camerados here.
Reports
A couple of interesting new reports worth checking out. Trust for London have a write up of their event: ‘How can we strengthen the voice of people with lived experience in campaigns for social change?’
And New Philanthropy Capital published a discussion paper on charities’ role in influencing change in the prison system.
People
Prominent campaigner, Ruth Hunt, announced she’s stepping down as Stonewall chief exec. And Women’s Aid Chief Exec, Katie Ghose, was forced to step down after complaints about her public praise for Ukip when she was at the Electoral Reform Society.
Events
I’ve done a poor job of keeping up to speed with what events are coming up in the months ahead, but thankfully thinking, doing, changing have a great overview of all the best training available for change-makers.
And finally …
That’s it for another month. Lots that I had to leave out, otherwise this blog would go on and on and on.
And finally, finally …
As ever, thanks to all the amazing campaigners and change-makers on Twitter etc who keep blogging and posting on all of this stuff.
And finally, finally, finally, any feedback?
If so, drop me a line via Twitter — @petemoorey