Learn and discuss with expert practitioners and with peers about key trends relevant to campaigning in 2022 and beyond.

Keep current with the zeitgeist

This is not the same world we started with two years ago before the Covid pandemic.

A lot of issues have come up over the last few years that require leaders of campaigning/advocacy initiatives to be informed of and integrated into strategic and tactical planning.

These include the rise of citizen potential and power, disinformation, polarisation, anti-discrimination, digital acceleration, etc.  The speakers will touch on many of these trends.

This speaker series is part of the lead-up to the annual Campaigning Forum event Sep 27-29 in London, UK (aka ECF2022).

Join the Campaigning Forum community email discussion list for year-round discussions, events, job postings, and more.

Suggested pricing

Speakers and moderators share in the revenue of the speaker series. So contribute what you can. The price covers the full week. All 2022 Campaigning Forum (ECF2022) participants can join for free. Suggested pricing:

• £250 - Salaried staff at large organisations, agencies & businesses
• £200 - Salaried staff at small-medium organisations
• £100 - Freelancers and academics
• £50 - students and job seekers
• £0 - can't pay (we understand!) and ECF2022 participants

Invoices: if you wish to be invoiced, email [email protected]

Contributions during each presentation are also possible. If you sign up to ECF2022 (London, Sep 27-29), you will get your contribution amount deducted from the fee.

New to Crowdcast? See the participant quick reference guide

Speaker series

This series of presentations and interviews aims to share key expertise and case studies important for understanding and excelling in 2022 and beyond.

Upcoming sessions:

1. Tue Sep 6, 09:30 UK: Movement building and polarisation - how should you campaign in polarised times? (Alison Goldsworthy - New York, USA)
2. Wed Sep 7, 10:30 UK: Countering disinformation: Ukrainian platform to verify content by experts (Dmytro Potekhin - Kyiv, Ukraine)
3. ...more to be confirmed

Previous sessions (available via video):

1. Campaigning in Russia - the new reality ('alias - Anastasia', undisclosed location)
2. Disinformation (Ed Coper, Australia)
3. Citizen power (Jon Alexander interviewed by Julie Dodd, UK)
4. Climate misinformation: how to get ahead of the bad guys (Harriet Kingaby, UK)
5. ...Got something to share? Get in touch.

This info will be updated regularly between now and the upcoming sessions. Some times may change last minute for people in/fleeing war.

Guest details for upcoming sessions

Alison Goldsworthy: Movement building and polarisation - how should you campaign in polarised times?

What is the underlying psychology that movement builders activate and how can it be leveraged to bring about change? Do we (gulp) risk making our divides worse rather than narrowing them?

Drawing in real life examples from around the world,  Alison Goldsworthy will lay down gauntlet get you thinking and provide some answers in this session.

Bio: Alison (Ali) Goldsworthy is President of Accord and co-author of Poles Apart. A movement builder and trouble maker by trade she now makes nearly as much trouble suggesting people who disagree should still try to work together. After building the campaigns team at Which? and leading the successful campaign for opt out organ donation in her native Wales Ali relocated to Stanford, California where she still lives with her husband and son.

Active in British politics for twenty years she was part of the constituency campaign team dubbed “the best in the U.K.” by the BBC, and continues to use the skills she learnt there as Vice Chair of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

Countering disinformation: Ukrainian platform to verify content by experts

Dmytro Potekhin (Kyiv, Ukraine based), is an activist and journalist committed to non-violence principles, was wondering how he could contribute to the Ukrainian resistance effort when Russia invaded Ukraine. Now he is developing a platform to help people know who to trust during and after the war (and in Ukraine and beyond) and would like to share his pilot work and get feedback and testers.

Ukranians have a lifetime of experience with disinformation thanks to the legacy of the Soviet Union and Russian interference. This means not only are they suspicious of all information they receive, even scientific facts are twisted and questioned. For instance vaccine hesitancy was rampant before the pandemic with low uptake for polio and other proven vaccines.

Dmytro has lived experience:

• As one of the organisers of the 2014 nonviolent revolution in Ukraine which prevented vote rigging by Putin's proxy Yanukovych
• In 2014 he went to the Russia-occupied city of Donetsk to factcheck for an article and got kidnaped and imprisoned for two months
• Of living in Kyiv when the 2022 Russian invasion started
• ...and more

His platform aims to use verified and trusted experts to validate information so people can learn what to trust. Some examples include verification of reports to help track down "Wanted" Russian war criminals and a platform to verify NGO petition and campaign facts - all with experts in the relevant fields.

In this 60 minute workshop, Dmytro will share his plans and prototypes, ask for feedback, offer testing opportunities and  spend some time willing to talk about his experience of the war. Join if you are curious about his work but don't expect a long session about the situation in Ukraine.

Guest details for previous sessions

'Anastasia', Campaigning in Russia

Campaigning in Russia has been possible despite an increasingly hostile government and media environment. 'Anastasia' works at a Moscow-based campaigning organisation and recently decided to leave Russia until the situation calms down. This interview will help the rest of us understand what campaigning in Russia was like before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how it changed rapidly and how the organisation intends to continue campaigning in the weeks and months to come.

Disinformation (Ed Coper, Australia)

How can we win our campaign narratives when the information landscape now favours falsehoods? Conspiracy theories, fake news, hyper-partisan abuse and hysteria generate massive amounts of engagement while the truth and facts are punished by social media algorithms. Understanding this new landscape, and how it takes advantage of the ways our brains are geared to work, is essential if we are to win back a shared reality, defeat harmful disinformation, and win our campaigns.

Bio: Ed Coper is the author of Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age. A leading expert on communications for impact, he has used cutting edge story-telling techniques to build social change initiatives, advocacy campaigns and political movements. He pioneered techniques that harness the power of new media and communications to mobilize and empower movements for impact. From building Australia's largest political movement, GetUp, to powering Change.org's global expansion into over 18 countries, Ed's groundbreaking work has featured in several museum exhibitions. Ed founded a NYC-based creative and strategic agency that has serviced multiple Nobel Peace Laureates, political leaders and grassroots movements -- all geared towards creating impact through their communications.

Citizen power (Jon Alexander interviewed by Julie Dodd, UK)

In more ways and with greater ingenuity than ever, people across the world are organising themselves and building the world they want to see. But many organisations still push a 'consumer' model of involvement where they lead and everyone else is asked to back them up with quick and easy symbolic action. Jon Alexander has condensed his findings from work at the New Citizenship Project exploring the shifting role of organisations and institutions in his new book CITIZENS: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us (buy online).

For the Campaigning Leadership week, Jon (also an ECF community member) will share some examples of citizen-led action from around the world and a set of principles organisations of all shapes and sizes might use to build change by working with people, organising and supporting them - rather than just mobilising them.  Examples will include:

• How the Gov Zero movement transformed the government of Taiwan
• How the National Trust reoriented itself to build the relationship between people and place
• How new forms of democracy are taking shape and taking hold across the world, from the city of Paris to the Chilean constitutional convention

Julie Dodd is well familiar with Jon's work and book and will interview him to help bring out relevant insights for the Campaigning Forum (ECF) community and Campaigning Leadership week participants. Julie is also an ECF community member and runs New Reality Consulting.

Climate misinformation: how to get ahead of the bad guys (Harriet Kingaby, UK)

Climate misinformation is a big threat to climate action. Whether it's fossil fuel companies or anti Net Zero delayers, we are communicating in an increasingly adversarial environment. What is climate misinformation? How is it developing and what can we do to fight back?

Harriet is a speaker, writer and activist working at the intersection between advertising, human rights and AI. She's commissioned award winning murals, tackled climate misinformation, trustworthy AI and co-founded a movement for conscious advertising. Find out more about her and her work at https://www.harrietkingaby.com/