How will campaigners remember 2011?

A combination of holidays and overseas travel with work have caused posts to dry up on the site over the last month or so, but with 2011 coming to an end it’s time to ask how will the year be remembered for campaigners and reflect on a few of the posts that I’ve written. Much [...]

Review: Counterpower by Tim Gee

This book will make a bold claim: that a single idea helps to explain why social movements past and present have succeeded, partially succeeded, or failed. So begins, Tim Gee’s new book Counterpower, released last week which asks the question. Why do some movements bring about transformational change while others fail? It’s a question that [...]

Advocacy in 2020 – future trends and how to prepare for them

I’m not sure what caused it but the spring saw a number of  reports being produced by NGOs which looked at future trends. The two I’ve found most useful are ‘Leading Edge 2020‘ by Troicaire and ‘2020 Development Futures‘ by Action Aid. They’re well worth a read as they provide a huge amount of insight [...]

How campaigning dealt a blow to the Murdoch empire

The last few days have been fascinating for any watcher of UK politics, media or campaigning. Pages and pages have already been written about what’s happened with News of the World and BSkyB. I’m certain more will come in the next few days and weeks, indeed the story seems to change by the day. But [...]

The F Word…

We’re always quick to celebrate a campaign success but what about a campaign failure? While it’s probably not appropriate to be trumpeting our failures in emails to supporters, it’s right to make sure we’re making space in our organisations to learn in a constructive way from the not so good, but how many of us actually do [...]