The Campaign Company Blog

Writing on the Wall

Our latest engagement tool - The Writing On The Wall - had its first public outing yesterday at Wakefield Council's Beacon event on 'Enabling Positive Youth Engagement' yesterday. It's a new and improved model of our Graffiti Wall - a 2mx2m cylindrical 'wall'. It was used yesterday to capture delegates' views of the event by asking them to write on the wall 'one thing I will take away from today'. Everyone had a scribble and the council got some great feedback about the day's events.

Environmental Tip of the Week - Toy libraries

The National Association of Toy & Leisure Libraries runs a national scheme called Play Matters, which loans good quality toys to families with young children. There are over 1,000 toy libraries throughout the UK, serving approximately 250,000 children. From an environmental perspective, it is often better to borrow than to buy. Click here for more info.

Political Campaigning on MySpace

Will be interesting to see if this is successful or not.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/09/29/does_myspace_get_your_vote.html#more

Although, see the child poverty matters MySpace site to see how ahead of the game we are www.myspace.com/childpovertymatters

You can't scare people into getting fit or going green

New research published today by the Economic and Social Research Council shows that positive, informative strategies which help people set specific health and environmental goals are far more effective when it comes to encouraging behaviour change than negatives strategies which employ messages of fear, guilt or regret. Click here for more info on the report.

www.mailbigfile.com

Since I'm slightly notorious for creating ridiculously large documents this is probably of most benefit to me, but www.mailbigfile.com is a handy way to send large files

ZeroPointZero

I’ve just stumbled across this website - In the coming months, www.ZeroPointZero.co.uk will be launched as a ‘social networking and activist website for people around the world that share one thing in common – taking actions (no matter how big or small) that truly make a difference.’ It also has a sister shopping site, Ethical Superstore.com, and to launch it they currently have a fair-trade chocolate sale. Yum!

Environmental Tip of the Week

Every year hundreds of thousands of trees are pulped to create the greetings cards we send. Posting cards also contributes to the use of fossil fuels by delivery vehicles. By sending electronic greeting cards you can help reduce your environmental impact 

http://www.foe.co.uk/cards/ is free, fast and you can send as many as you want.

Trust Youth

Clients such as NDCs, NHS Foundation Trusts and similar organisations may find ‘Trust Youth’ helpful. In partnership with CRAE and the Governance, the British Youth Council has launched Trust Youth, a guide on what being a trustee means for children and young people and how to recruit them. The guide has been developed which children and young people; it explains what the National Occupation Standards for Trustees and Management Committees mean in words that children and young people can understand, as well as outlines the practical steps organisations can take to recruit young trustees.

Great news for Trade Unions

Round 2 of the Union Modernisation Fund (UMF) was announced at the TUC last week. This is great news for cash strapped trade unions.Most unions tend to focus attention on delivering traditional trade union services to their members. The UMF enables unions to take on projects which they they would not usually have the resources to consider.

In the first UMF round , for example, we saw one of the smaller unions BFAWU, secure funding for a really innovative project to develop a a strategy for dealing with the increasing diversity of the workplaces it organises.

No formal announcement has been made yet - but indications are that there will be no significant change to the priority themes identified last year. There will be one addition though - inclusion of a capacity-building programme to support training for equality reps.This has been included in response to the Women and Work Commission (WWC)  report, Shaping a Fairer Future. This opens up a new vein of activities for trade unions - with the possibility of financial help from the DTI.

The call for bids is palnned for November - and the timescale will be longer to reflect feedback from the first round - so start thinking about possible projects now!

From supermarket till to Prime Minister?

Last night, Sarah and I were fortunate enough to go to an advance screening of 'The Amazing Mrs Pritchard' - a new BBC drama about a normal woman who works in a supermarket, but then becomes Prime Minister. So disillusioned is she with politics that she decides to create her own political party, the Purple Alliance. Boosted by public support, several MPs switch over to her, until she has enough to form the majority party.

She is played by Jane Horrocks, supported by Steven Mackintosh (you'll recognise  him from loads of programmes...Adrian Mole, Buddha of Suburbia, etc). Sarah's pictured with him here:

Okay, so it's a very blurred pic (don't know why I was wobbling so much) so you can see who he really is by clicking here.

The show's on screen in the first week of October and is made by Kudos - who also make Life on Mars, Spooks, Hustle, etc. Pure quality all round - not least from the writer, Sally Wainwright.

So make sure you tune in. It features lots of political cameos and is funny, moving and enlightening. A must for both political hacks and normal people.