Key event links: Apply | Overview | Participants | Agenda | Sessions | Speakers | Facilitator | Policies
The event brings together a timely range of experienced participants to explore and share what we need to learn in this year and beyond.
Not your conference-as-usual
Designed around participants
Most events are speaker-focused and organiser chosen sessions. For the Campaigning Forum this model is flipped: participants propose and run the session at the event. Some speakers are still invited to provide “food for thought” and inspiration, but they too participate and learn with everyone else. The result is not only two days of intense learning, but entering a community of learners that evolves with your career and life.
So it is important to know who the other participants are in advance.
You shape the agenda
At the Campaigning Forum, participants’ session proposals are scheduled to make an agenda. Each chooses which to join and share expertise at. The simple but powerful model accelerates learning and builds your learning network. It is key to the event’s success.
Do you know what topics you wish to discuss?
Share your expertise by contributing
Run a workshop, present, 7 minutes or 45 minutes. Participants are the experts and we learn from each other. By hosting a workshop or presentation, you learn because you get feedback from peers. Plus you develop you leadership skills.
What can you share? It can be a campaign your are working on or planning, a failure (or success), a challenge to the sector, etc.
Scenario planning + system archetypes
Business-as-usual is gone. What happens next is unknown. So new to ECF is scenario planning and system archetypes.
Scenarios helps us prepare for adapting quickly to an uncertain future.
System archetypes help us recognise the dynamics in a situation and influence them them strategic interventions.
Speakers focus on timely sector issues
Speakers are invited to contribute on specific current and sector issues. in 2025, Sarah Corbett is speaking on day one about “Gentle Protest: Limiting polarisation in our protests”. A second speaker will be announced soon.
In 2024 the speakers topics were:
- Preparing for a likely change in the UK government
- How to integrate local organising with digital mobilisation, plus learning from inclusion, digital transformation and countering fake news.
These are key challenges facing the sector in 2025 and speakers will both challenge you and show what is possible because they’re doing it.
Topic continuity
A few key topics run through speakers and discussions (a stream/track).
The focuses in 2025 are
- Implications for a new world era
- Countering disinformation and the far right
- Engaging local communities
Coaching is available
Limited spaces for provate, confidential guidance is available at the 2025 event. You choose your needs. Topics often range from:
- professional: work, goals, resiliance, co-workers, managers
- personal life: confidence, trauma, relationships, kids, relatives
In 2025, 20-minute coaching session by Anna (trained coach and psychotherapist) are available on 8th Apr. before 18:00 and all day on 9th and 10th April.
Key event links: Apply | Overview | Participants | Agenda | Sessions | Speakers | Facilitator | Policies
Sarah P Corbett
We live in a world where we can often avoid listening to people we disagree with, where it’s easier to stay in our silos and demonise ‘the other side’ and where the media focus on the hero-victim-persecutor (Drama Triangle) click-bait narrative. Corbett puts forward a ‘Gentle Protest’ framework to create campaigns that aim to empower all involved: limit burn out in activists, be critical friends to powerholders not aggressive enemies and does not involve craftivism! She is also delivering a craftivism workshop you can join in on the last day of the conference.
Sarah P Corbett is an award-winning activist, author and Ashoka Fellow. Born in Everton, the fourth most deprived ward in the UK. Founder of the Craftivist Collective, her ‘Gentle Protest’ methodology has helped chnage hearts, minds, policies and laws around the world. Working with campaign organisations as well as cultural institutions such as the V&A, Helsinki Design Week and unusual allies such as Secret Cinema to engage ‘non-activists’ in quiet, kind, strategic protests. The Craftivist Collective Handbook was published 2nd May 2024. Her TEDx Talk ‘Activism Needs Introverts’ was chosen as a TED Talk of the Day and has over 1 million views.
Craig Stewart
Far-right thinking is becoming more and more prevalent within working class communities. Craig describes his interactions with far-right thinking in his community, why he feels the far-right is gaining ground with the working class and how the trade union movement is vital in tackling the far-right as a whole.
Craig is a Project Officer for the TUC’s Worker-led Transition project, which aims to help futureproof UK manufacturing jobs across high carbon sectors, throughout the energy transition. As a teenager Craig joined the RAF where he learnt his trade as an Electrical Aircraft Technician. He then found his passion for the trade union movement while working in the petrochemical industry, having fought for union recognition while employed at Navigator Terminals, a bulk liquid storage company on Teesside.
Craig is proud to be from a working-class background, born and raised in the North East of England. In recent years he has witnessed the impact the far-right is having on people within his community and is determined to take a stand against fascist ideology taking hold. Craig believes that the trade union movement can offer a true voice of the working class, a voice that stands against discrimination and empowers values of love, respect, inclusivity and dignity.
Key event links: Apply | Overview | Participants | Agenda | Sessions | Speakers | Facilitator | Policies
Hello, my name is Anna Raymond, and I am a personal and business coach with a diverse experience including psychology, and various therapeutic approaches.
I am experienced with a range of psychotherapy approaches including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for trauma resolution, body-oriented therapy for holistic healing, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for mindset and behavior change, and Jungian psychoanalysis for deep self-exploration.
I combine these approaches to support individuals in achieving their personal and professional goals, fostering growth, healing, and self-discovery. I am dedicated to creating a safe and empowering space for my clients to explore their inner world, overcome challenges, and unlock their full potential.
Organised and facilitated by Duane Raymond (FairSay)
Founder of FairSay, the Campaigning Forum event (and community) and active in campaigning and digital for over two decades
Duane organised the first Campaigning Forum event (originally the eCampaigning Forum or ECF) in 2002 in the role of Oxfam’s first digital campaigning manager. He wanted an event that was focused on his needs as a digital campaigning practitioner in this emerging field.
He knew no speaker would know as much as his peers, so he organised anyone he could identify as fellow digital campaigning pioneers to work to join the event. The open space model was the perfect fit and the event has inspired many other events around the world.
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