What if you looked at your local campaign group as if it were a rock band?

You'd be surprised how many parallels I see between local campaign groups and rock bands.

Wait, come back...

They are both collaborative, social units with shared aims and values. They both engage, in different ways, in performance and interaction with a public. They're both in the business of changing people's minds. And at their best - they both entail a collective surrender of ego to the shared goal. 

I'd be interested in the reflections this metaphor might suggest to you. 

And what rock band does your local group remind you of? Hopefully not Spinal Tap...

But here's one long-form thought to get you started.

Lovely photo of  the fabulous Arboretum via Greg Nate at Wikimedia Commons

Visible and invisible contributions

The relationship between the campaigners/musicians/performers in a group is vitally important. The value of each member should be measured by both their visible and invisible contributions. 

Think about your favourite bands. Think about the one who might not write the songs, but is absolutely crucial to the creative dynamic, or to the social glue of the band, or to the relationship with the fans.

Or, think about your local campaign group. Who's the member who might not be your coordinator or your issue expert in residence, but is the one who invites you all over to dinner in December? Who takes your 'crazy idea' for dressing as giant traffic cones and helps you turn it into something which works? Who makes the newcomers feel welcome?

Given the number of big personalities among musicians and campaigners, who's the one who stops you all killing each other and keeps you working together? 

Cos yep, that's your invisible contribution right there.

And that's why understanding and nurturing the ecology of your local group is so important.

Ten attempts towards a nutshell explanation for Campaign Organisers

As we gear up this week for opening applications for Campaign Organisers, I'm keen to really get our pitch - my 1 minute nation of what the essence of the project is - absolutely nailed. I've just drafted a letter to local group coordinators which I think does that for local groups pretty much. 

I expect that I'll share that here next week when it's run the internal gauntlet because it will be in the public domain by then and hey, it'll be (mostly) my writing.

The one missing element as far as I'm concerned is what I call the 'nutshell explanation'. The one-liner, which by metaphor, analogy or straight-talking takes it out of the realm of Friends-of-the-Earth-speak, tells the listener what the project is about and gives them something to chew on.

Here are some latte-length personal thoughts:.

• It's a training programme for the next wave of kick-ass Friends of the Earth campaigners
• It's giving local groups the third point of the grassroots holy trinity - we've had the campaigner and the group coordinator; now we have the organiser as recruiter and empowerer
• It's like giving every starship captain their own Deanna Troi (too geeky?)
• It's giving local groups a toolkit for growth.
• It will mean more, bigger and better groups.
• It's a 21st century take on the county network
• It's bringing nurturing to the centre of local group culture.
• It's the biggest potential evolutionary step of local groups since the 1990's, BUT we'll be giving them the tools to do it on their own terms.
• It's about helping local groups achieve a more even distribution of the best of what they do now.

And finally, once more with kittens!

Who could resist such a tempting offer? Although if I'm reduced to LOLcats it's probably a sign I should take a break from brainstorming...

Organisers update: some musings on (non) culture-change

Chuffed to get this article in Change Your World (our activist magazine) about the Organisers project. These pieces are often written and edited by committee, but I'm in there somewhere with this one.

We're gearing up for opening applications for the first batch of Organisers at the start of September, so a summer of planning and bottoming things out is about to be given its first trial.

Among other things, that will probably lead to some verbal riffing and asides as I experiment with talking to people about the vast potential that this project has.

Organisers = culture change?

One issue I'm still grappling with is the extent to which Organisers represent a cultural shift for us at Friends of the Earth. Here's my current answer, as adapted from the project FAQ. 

I think we'll be surprised how much it won't be much of a culture change, actually.

On the one hand, it does present an opportunity to look over the fence, see what others are doing across the campaigning spectrum, and cherry pick the best bits. For example, understanding what we can learn from Transition. 

To go back to Transition for a moment, you'd probably find at least some of their methods being already employed by us in some places, using our own language and subcultural idiom. 

Now, I'm not holding up Transition an exemplar for everything, but it is a network which at its best appears to have absolutely put facilitation, empowerment and creativity at the heart of what it does. How can we not want to learn from that?

On the other hand, it's also feel it's also a chance to reflect on and consolidate the best practice of local groups right now. The obvious thing to do at this point would be to reference the giants of the Friends of the Earth grassroots - your Manchesters, your Birminghams - but it's also about making sure that Organisers learn from the smaller groups that achieve great things as well.

There's inevitably going to be some novelty to the project - I'd be sorely disappointed if there wasn't, to be honest. But we'll be talking evolution, not revolution. At least most of the time.

Organisers: something transformative this way comes

Ever since I joined Friends of the Earth, I've been itching to be involved in developing something transformative.

Of course, you hope that every campaign, every piece of work you do with a local group is the Hail Mary pass, the sudden end-to-end touchdown that every quarterback tries for. But what you more often get are a series of small triumphs, the incremental changes, the quiet treasures which sustain you in your working life.

Not everything can be another Big Ask in spirit or in practice.

But I think this Organisers project could be. 

This might look (and walk, and quack) like a new voluntary role for the grassroots. After all, that's what it ostensibly is.

Yet take a step back, and another one, and I see something else. 

I think this gives us, the grassroots, an opportunity for collective culture change - evolution if you like - towards something really exciting. 

The Organiser as change agent could allow us to combine the best of what we do now, the sheer political savvy which is still our biggest asset, with lessons from the decentralised environmentalisms of the past decade like Transition and Climate Camp.

Plus - I get to plan all of this with some lovely colleagues, and then develop it collaboratively with interested local group people and more. Bliss!

For the official project news, go here. But as Uncle Eric says, feel free to ask me any questions you like here. And stay tuned for further strictly unofficial reflecting on this blog about the best thing I've gotten involved in for a long time.