everyday social democracy

Do you want to learn creative campaigning techniques and use them to help shape our campaign?

We’re launching "All Doled Up" our campaign on youth unemployment and we want you to try out new techniques to help develop it!

Almost one in five young people are out of work. Unemployment affects us all, whether we're out of work or our friends and family are.

That's why we want to work with you so you can do something about it together. So you can get together with other young people to campaign on youth unemployment where you live or study.

Toynbee Hall and Compass Youth want to invite you to an all day training day. So you’ll be able to

• Use stories young people have shared with us on youth unemployment to spread the word about our campaign and get those in power to support and act on our pledges

• Learn creative campaigning techniques - such as making viral videos, get your message out to the media and designing campaign visuals
  
  

You'll be able to try these out on the day itself with other young people and most importantly what you create will be what we use to campaign on youth unemployment - your videos, your slogans, your flyers!

This is what our last campaigns camp was like, just imagine you could take part in our next one!

Creative Campaigns Day 09 from Creative Campaigns Day on Vimeo.

What are you waiting for?

• Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury
• Dr Rainbow Murray, Politics Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London
• Bellavia Ribeiro, Black Students' Officer, National Union of Students
• Tulip Siddiq, Labour Party council candidate in Regent's Park and BAME Officer for Young Labour

We’re the upside of down and it’s up to us to take action. Working with you, Compass Youth are developing a campaign that’s going to be led by you to start the bounce back.

2. Bring along three of your friends

And after having encouraging people to support you, the next part of the toolkit on getting (s)elected is how you develop your campaign - deals on wheels, family values, caring & sharing - sounds like a 1950s film, but really it works.

Don’t make deals with people you don’t know, earn their trust

If you want to encourage people to vote for you, you need to build relationships and earn their trust. Even the committed activists who leaflet whatever the weather – ideologically and well…literally! They are not necessarily supporters of the status quo just because they go out campaigning and don't engage in debate.

Don’t treat them as employees, treat them like your family

Even when you are trying to encourage people to vote or campaign for you, you need to explain clearly what is on offer and what is being asked of them and what they stand to gain from campaigning and voting for you. This can take time to work out, but it is well worth the effort. If you don’t, they may become anxious and frustrated, which in turn could lead to them backing out from voting for you and being disillusioned from the whole process.

Don’t take them for granted, value them as people you couldn’t do without

When your supporters do decide to get involved and give freely of their time and energy, you need to recognise and value their efforts, however small. This can be as simple as thanking them regularly, buying a round of drinks or getting them to lead parts of your campaign.

Expect to be surprised by your supporters, they’re the people you’ve been waiting for

The best ideas for your campaign and manifesto can be found in surprising places, and this shouldn't be a linear process of you publishing a manifesto and stopping there. There should always be space for your supporters to bring in their new ideas.

Understand what you’re doing with the tools you’ve got

Using as many web channels as possible won’t work unless they are clearly connected to what you’re doing offline. Your website doesn’t only need to be updated regularly, also think about who will use your website – both your supporters who will link to it, and your audience who will be directed to it

Understand how your supporters can participate

Remember you are not looking to get as many supporters as possible, you are looking to get very specific supporters to commit to doing different things. You need to understand this in terms of when and how these different people contribute.

Share your success and they will commit even more to you

You need to think about why you are standing and who you are standing for – this means you need to accept to share in whatever success you get with the people & networks that have supported you (even if you don't necessarily support everything they individually stand for). They will be more interested in spreading your message if their ideas have helped shape it.

Thanks to madamn flick for the photos published under Creative Commons license.

Next stop, coping with your campaign.

Hope you enjoy reading and who knows, you may find the articles useful or even interesting! Please feel free to comment - I welcome criticism as much as compliments.

Now that you've developed your message,

It is easy to forget that your existing & target supporters will have important insights to contribute on how you could really convince them to come and vote for you on the day.

Start with your instinct, be ruthless in your judgement

Experiment and then reflect. Your campaign will never be 100% perfect, so go with what you feel is best at that particular time and then carry forward what's worked well and discard what hasn't.

Don’t just make it blood, sweat and tears, give them leadership and a smile

All campaigns need a mixture of inspiration and perspiration. You need to display a certain degree of charisma to galvanise your supporters, even and especially in the most stressful moments. But you need to accompany this passion with empathy and listening to empower your supports to carry the campaign forward.

Don’t just tell supporters what you stand for, get them to vote for you!

You can’t sustain your campaign until whatever elections you’re standing for just by getting people to sign up and get involved in your campaign. You need to put in hard work into getting this commitment, but if you don't, you will have hundreds of people signed up to your mailing list, but this will be useless if you can't get elected. If you get a maximum number of people who can vote for you, you will be confident of being with a very strong shout of winning.

Hope you enjoy reading and who knows, you may find the articles useful or even interesting! Please feel free to comment - I welcome criticism as much as compliments.

The organisation I help run - Compass Youth held a highly successful workshop and debate at the Progressive London Conference. Over fifty people took part and the results of the 'progressive future' ideas and campaigns will be announced shortly.

Compass Youth Obama Campaign Workshop

Obama won the Democratic nomination and then the American Presidency on the back of inspiring and innovative campaigning. Not only did he offer a refreshingly optimistic and hopeful message, but he harnassed technology in new ways to communicate with and mobilise his supporters.

There is much the progressive left can learn from his campaigning techniques, and with that in mind Compass Youth has organised a campaign workshop with three excellent speakers:

Matthew McGregor worked for internet strategy company Blue State Digital for three months during the Obama campaign, and has now set up Blue State Digital's London office. He also ran Jon Cruddas' deputy leadership campaign, winner of Channel 4's 'Political Campaign of the Year' award. He will talk about what set the Obama campaign apart, and what we can learn from it in the UK.

Tom Miller from Compass Youth has blogged for a number of years, now doing so on several platforms, including his own; newerlabour, and LabourList, the newly launched website which aims to provide a space for Labour-based debate. He will discuss the current use of technology in British politics and where things are heading.

Max Freedman is a Parliamentary researcher and the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Kingston and Surbiton. He helped canvass in Ohio during the Obama campaign, and will about how the field campaign operated so effectivly.

For more information or to book a place please contact youthchair@compassonline.org.uk or join the facebook event here.

"The crisis changes nothing"

The crisis of global capital and the lefts reaction to globalisation; a Compass Youth think-piece - Adrian Bua-Roberts:

"...if the left reverts to the comfort zone it naturally finds within statist discourse it is surrendering its chance to influence the reformation of the transnational state structures within which capital is continually entrenching its dominance.

It is of crucial importance that progressives and the left realise this. Organized labour, acting within the nation state framework, has proved structurally incapable of combating the increased transnational coordination of capital. Improvements in communication and technology have enabled capital to tap into reserve armies of poverty stricken workers around the world, pitching their governments against each other to become more "competitive" in what amounts to a regulatory race to the bottom. In the West, this has began to dissolve the myriad of rights gained through centuries of class struggles and has created a huge downward pressure of wages. Stagnating wages led to increased debt, feeding the capitalist systems' fetish for consumption, laying much of the groundwork for the present crisis."

Read the full article on the compass website.

Finally a word from our friends: