Come and help me answer some campaigning conundrums

Lucy Pearce

16 April 2013

What great campaigning moments stick in my mind?

• The Suffragettes
• Nelson Mandela
• A poster of Desmond Tutu saying: "I don't know which Bible people are reading when they say that religion and politics don't mix."
• My Mum taking her own bags to the market and refusing South African fruit
• Greenham Common women's peace camp, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marches and blockades
• Christian Aid, Amnesty International, FairTrade

These were the wallpaper to my childhood. I wasn't physically there; but I was part of a liberal family who took political action, and these were the conversations and media chat going on around me.

What's your campaigning memory? Do you 'remember' campaigns from before you were born? Maybe you are part of a trade union with its conscious recalling of past struggles? Or are you a student or parent involved in improving your local environment?

I'm interested in interrogating our own 'campaigning memory' to better understand the way we approach and respond to campaigns. And I'll be considering these questions in a workshop I'm running at the Sheila McKechnie Foundation's annual People Power Conference.

Having recently graduated with a Masters in Cultural History, Memory, and Identity and worked in campaigning for 15 years, I'm pleased they've given me this opportunity.

The Sheila McKechnie Foundation is the go-to organisation for training people like you and me to be more effective campaigners. Anyone is welcome - however much campaigning experience you do or don't have.

The conference will help you get your head round all sorts of campaigning conundrums - how to work with older people, connect with the media, deal with decision makers, work at the local level, and how to keep going. It'll be a mixture of workshops, debates, and talks.

High profile human rights lawyer and Founder and Director of Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith will open by reflecting on his own experience and memory of campaigning through the last 20 years. And at the end of the day Margaret Aspinall, figurehead of the longstanding Hillsborough Campaign, will close.

I hope you might be inspired to come along to be part of People Power 2013, on 24 April in London.

From taking online actions to forming a local group, find out about campaigning with Friends of the Earth .