By Jessica Reed
Yesterday Anthony Barnett and I went to Birmingham to take part in the Social Change Exchange convention (see our flickR pictures set). Around 250 people from all kind of organisations gathered to dicuss social change and the power of grass-roots movements.
The list of attendees was made of very diverse and eclectic individuals, artists and NGOs, which considerably added to the event's worth: I learned about GeneWatch, an organisation which monitors developments in genetic technologies from a public interest, met the delegate of the Olive co-op, which promotes responsible tourism and fair trade in the Middle East, laughed when reading Kate Evans' brilliant cartoons about Climate Change, talked with the representatives of People + Planet, Friends of the Earth and Results - an international lobby group working on ending hunger and poverty.
The convention's main goal was to have different organisations exchange their own strategic ideas and experiences so as to inspire one another to be more efficient, more dedicated, and more connected. The day started with a workshop in which a group of 4 participants were asked to share stories about their work that was inspiring, and made them feel like they contributed to something good. Other participants would then analyse the 'reasons behind the success' in the anectote (good communication? passion? excellent PR work? dedicated volunteers?) and write it down on post its which were later collected on a huge wall under "What Works?" :
Thanks to this workshop I learned how the People + Planet team successfully recruited and trained volunteers to obtain better results, and how the workers behind Local Works quickly and brilliantly spread the word about their campaign for the Sustainable Communities Bill.
The second part of the day was another workshop, where participants from different organisations were ask to discuss this sentence: "what more can we do together?". Many inspiring ideas were thrown our way during this debate, from creating a portal similar to Gumtree or Craigslist for 'social change' organisations to network more efficiently, to creating a pan-organisational movement that would challenge global politics under one single banner (ambitious, this one: I wonder what topics all participants would have agreed on to make their voices heard).
It was definitely a productive day, and a first step towards more group-brainstorming: connections were made, advices given, and spirits were lifted.
