Campaigning with the people

In this session, you get to tailor your agenda by choosing one of the following talks to attend. After each talk, there’ll be a Q&A and discussions in your group (you can decide on the day which talk you’d like to join). After that, we’ll ask you to find someone from a different talk and brief them on all the interesting takeaways from your session – it’s all about the sharing!

• Linking up local campaigning with people with lived experiences. The campaigns team at Mind have been developing ways to better link their national campaigning work with what’s happening locally and where decisions are being made. Alicia will talk through a recent campaigning pilot where a group of people with lived experience of mental health problems and staff from local Minds in Greater Manchester were brought together to develop and deliver a small local campaign reflecting participants lived experience. Alicia will share the opportunities and challenges that this presented and their plans for what’s next. Alicia Bainbridge, senior campaigns officer, Mind

• Not Every Disability is Visible – empowering the people affected to campaign. Over the last couple of years Crohn’s & Colitis UK has been running a successful campaign – Not Every Disability is Visible. The campaign looks to change signage on accessible toilets to increase understanding and break down stigma to allow people with Crohn’s and colitis and other invisible conditions to access to these toilets without discrimination. It’s already secured the change in all major supermarkets and most travel hubs such as airports and train stations. Andy will share how they’ve been engaging the people they’re campaigning on behalf of to empower them to campaign on the issues that directly affect them. Andy McGuinness, campaigns manager, Crohn’s & Colitis UK

• Putting the lived experience of homelessness at the heart of Crisis campaigns. From engaging thousands of people with lived experience of homelessness in its award-winning ‘No One Turned Away’ campaign, to ensuring the voice of lived experience was at the heart of its ‘Have Your Say’ consultation, Crisis has sought to ensure that those who benefit from its campaigns are major players in both strategy and delivery. You will hear how lived experience informed the content ‘Everybody In: how to end homelessness in Great Britain’ – the evidence-based recipe of policies necessary to end homelessness – and how Crisis will look to support those with lived experience to lead campaign activity into the future. Steve Lee, senior campaigns officer and Camille Furtado, senior campaigns officer, Crisis

• The Legitimacy gap – organising as an outsider. As professional campaigners and organisers, it’s often the case that we are organising disadvantaged groups of which we don’t belong, and that challenge is often multiplied when it comes to local campaigning. Nathan has worked as a local campaigner and organiser in the industrial, political and charity campaign sectors and now helps organise stroke survivors and carers. This talk will focus on how to overcome the legitimacy challenge we all face as campaign organisers. Nathan Oswin, local campaigns officer, Stroke Association

• #mumsonamission: supporting mums affected by issues with childcare and universal credit to speak out in the media. Maddy will talk about how making this a core part of the campaign strategy has had a real impact, not just in terms of campaign wins, but also by enabling the fantastic mums they campaign alongside to feel strong, empowered, and that they can make change happen. She’ll also talk about some tangible things they’ve learnt in terms of what to do and what not to do when supporting people to speak out about their stories in the press. Maddy Moore, campaigner, UK Poverty Campaigns, Save the Children UK

In small groups, each table will work through a real-life ‘campaigning with the people’ challenge (put forward by delegates). The aim is to come up with smart solutions and an action plan to solve it. So, if you have a ‘campaigning with the people’ challenge you’d like to work through in this activity (you get a whole team of campaigning pros working on it – who wouldn’t want that?!) bring your challenge to the event to pitch to your group. Here’s how the activity will run:

• Pitch and choose – 5 minutes
  • Each delegate with a real-life ‘campaigning with the people’ challenge will pitch their idea to the group in 1-2 minutes.
  • The group will then vote on which challenge they’d like to work on.
• Establish – 15 minutes
  • Why is it a challenge?
  • What is the background behind the challenge?
  • Who are you targeting? And what is their call to action?
  • What would the outcome(s) and benefit(s) you hope to achieve by tackling it?
  • What resources are available for you to use? What channels can you use?
  • What are the timings for this?
  • Are there any risks associated with the challenge?
  • Anything else? E.g. how will you measure impact? Get senior buy-in?
• Brainstorm – 30 minutes. Come up with as many ideas as you can that could address this challenge.
  • Rapid ideation – 5 minutes – Individually, delegates scribble down every idea that pops into their heads
  • Group discussion – 10 minutes – As a group, delegates discuss the ideas they’ve come up with.
  • Rapid ideation – 5 minutes
  • Group discussion – 10 minutes

• Analyse – 20 minutes
  • What ideas could work in tackling the challenge? How could they work together?
  • Pull out quick wins v longer-term activity, to help with planning and sequencing
  • Who do you need to involve to make it happen?
  • What impact would the solution have? How would you measure this? How can you justify the cost?
  • Anything else?
• Feedback to the group as a whole – 15 minutes
  • Each group has 3 minutes to share what their challenge is and how they propose to tackle it.