Agenda: Campaigning Forum 2026 (Oxford)

Collaborate like our future depends on it (because it does!) 

2025 was a key inflection point in what had already been a steady shift in global power. The consequences will last a lifetime and beyond just as the world wars still affect today.

These current events are leaving us all anxious and feeling helpless. This is intentional by maliscious groups. So the 2026 event is designed to:

1. Renew your hope and resilience
2. Boost your confidence that something can be done and you can do it
3. Learn from stories of successes and failure from each other
4. Explore how to counter disinformation and extremism
5. Retrain our minds to have a proactive response to changes
6. Reconsider what our role is in shaping the next decades
   
7. Build deep connections to expand your allies and peers to make the above continuous

Arrival: Campaigning Forum 2026

'ECF Participation' briefing

Meet others, propose agenda topics, learn how open space works, get settled for two days of great learning.

Open to all and it prepares you to be a confident, engaged participant from day one.

Day One: Campaigning Forum 2026

Welcome, introduction and agenda review

Warm-up activities and speed networking

Open Space introduction and agenda setting

Open Space knowledge exchange A

1. To-be-determined based on participant input

Examples from 2023 - 2025 events include:

1. Diversity and inclusion: creating community allies
2. What campaign or initiative am I proud to be part of (and want you to know all about)
3. Shifting gear: Amending campaign plans halfway through a campaign
4. Value of getting celebrity / politician endorsements
5. Election strategies and election agenda
6. Campaign tactics for impact
7. Is Just Stop Oil et. al. helpful or counterproductive?

Featured speaker:

Campaigning at a crossroads: How do we respond as a community? (Katie Roberts and Alex Jones, Sheila McKechnie Foundation)

Examples from past events include:

• 2025: Gentle Protest: Limiting polarisation in our protests (Sarah P Corbett)
• 2024: Why community power matters, regardless of the political weather
  (Benali Hamdache, Head of Campaigns & Organising, Save the Children + Green Party Councillor)
• 2023: A personal journey, practical steps to how we're re-building the agency to shift power (Alex Kent and Kate Muhwezi, co-CEO of Restless Development)

Peer workshops / presentations

1. Disinformation: identifying and to countering it (Glyn Thomas)
2. Navigating the tensions and difficulties in differences of opinion and competing priorities with supporters and coalition members (Lola Karpf and Rosella Cottam)
3. Humans in the mix: how lobbying lost its way (and what we need to do about it) (Keira Roth): For years we've been perfecting the tools. The supporter targeting, the templates, the send times. But somewhere along the way we stopped asking the most important question: What do the humans on the other end actually need? The view of digital lobbying from inside Parliament has become so dire, it's on the verge of collapsing. This session combines original research - interviews with MPs, parliamentary staff, and campaigners - with ideas from behavioural science to spark a conversation about what better looks like. Come with your stories, your frustrations, and your ideas. Leave with something useful.
4. Senior campaigning managers surgery: topic TBC. Part of Campaigning Leadership Forum stream.

Peer workshops/presentations in 2023 - 2025:

1. Gentle Protest workshop (Sarah Corbett)
2. Renters' Rights Bill (James Austin, Shelter): The campaign, the tactics we've delivered to keep pressure up and how our campaign has changed between Tory and Labour governments.
3. Diversity stream: Amplifying Authentic Voices: Supporting inclusive storytelling
4. Outreach room: Facing down disinformation: A success story in local elections - Aleksandra Meshkova (Greenpeace Bulgaria). See presentation details
5. Seminar Room 10: Digital transformation for nonprofits: What it is, what are the benefits and how can they be understood better by our sector - Brani Milosevic (LinkedIn). See workshop details
6. Seminar Room 11: SCN - Mobilising Community Power through Fiscal Hosting, Saoirse Barry (Social Change Next)
7. Podcasting workshop: Exploring how we at the Transnationals Institute (TNI) put together our podcast, share experiences and brainstorm other ways to make a podcast successful. (Denis Burke, Transnationals Institute)
8. Graphic design secrets (Jean O’Brien, Digital Charity Labs)

Open Space knowledge exchange B

To be determined based on participant input.

Examples from 2023 - 2025 events include:

1. What matters in an election: are people voting on issues or do issues move voters?
2. Are awareness campaigns relevent in the 21st century?
3. Media relations: getting media coverage and working with journalists effectively
4. How to set-up your own grassroots campaign / campaigning group or organisations
5. Stopping shrinking civic space
6. Going beyond petitions to convert leads into supporters
7. Disinformation: how to tackle it and communicate in a polarised society
8. Artificial Intelligence

Open Space knowledge exchange C

To be determined based on participant input.

Examples from 2023 - 2025 events include:

1. Disinformation
2. Tackling internal politics to support campaigning
3. Why do we use tactics that don't work?
4. What can NGOs expect to acheive during an election campaign?
5. Creating positive, solution-oriented campaigns in a world of crisis fatigue
6. How to measure success when trying to reach people's hearts and minds?

Ignite talks (7 min each)

1. Email to MP: Help Your Supporters Write Messages Politicians Actually Want to Read (Glyn Thomas)
2. How to build a counterforce to the digital dominance of the radical right - (Ali Walker Davies, Forward Action)
3. What’s the future of the BBC? (Beckie Shuker)
4. How lobbying forgot the humans (Keira Roth)
5. More timeslots available on day 2. See what it takes to deliver an ignite-style talk.

Examples from 2023 - 2025 events include:

1. Results of a campaign action page survey and review (Glyn Thomas)
2. Message testing for nature-related topics (Liesbeth Van der Bossche)
3. Using the law as a campaigner (Naomi Tiley)
4. Live: Build and deploy a campaign action in 7 min. (Nathaniel Ashford)
5. Running decentralised campaign with the help of your teams and volunteers (Henry Mackintosh)
6. How we at ShareAction have used AGM activism - Isabella Salkeld, Kelly Shields, Jeanne Martin (ShareAction)
7. Campaigning at the time of social media reactions - Paolo Gerbaudo (Complutense University Madrid)
8. Forming a trade union within your workplace - Conor McGurran (Trades Union Congress)
9. Multi camera livestreaming for covering protests and marches - Zoe Broughton
10. Humor and Social Change - Brian Fitzgerald (Dancing Fox)
11. The Peat-za box: ‘It’s pizza, but not as we know it’ which is an engagement tool to get people interested in peatlands! (Sara Booth-Card, Wildlife Trusts)
12. The Rooftop News: a news site which aims to platform positive news stories, to amplify maligned voices and offer an alternative to the constantly negative mainstream news cycle (Lizzie Lewis, Campaign Collective)
13. How to get rid of your website's consent banner (Juri Maier, wegewerk)
14. UK Online Safety Bill, and the implications of its proposals for campaigners (Pam Cowburn, Open Rights Group)

Pre-dinner social and speed pitching

Service providers and consultants tell you what they offer, answer your questions and/or take your feedback. 5 minutes per table then rotate. Free drinks (wine, beer, soft drinks)

Examples from 2023 - 2025 events include:

1. Campaign Collective (Lizzie Lewis and Ian Morton)
2. JustPost.pro (Duane Raymond)
3. Nick Chowdrey (WaterAid): I'm going freelance!
4. Care2, Rhiannan Sullivan

Campaigning Forum 2026 - Day Two

Day two agenda review, pulse check and agenda setting

Open Space knowledge exchange D

Based on participant contributions

1. Participants propose topics during one of the agenda setting sessions

Examples from 2023-2025 event include:

1. Influencing a (potential) Labour government
2. Starting an orgasnising network from scratch
3. How to counter the alt-right: appropriating and twisting of progressive causes?
4. How to engage Western European audiences in Eastern European naure conservation campaigns?

Open Space knowledge exchange E

Based on participant contributions:

1. Participants propose topics during one of the agenda setting sessions

Examples from 2023-2025 event include:

1. Tackling internal politics to support campaigning
2. Stunts and creative campaign ideas
3. How do you evaluate the success of a campaign? e.g social media, going beyond numbers
4. How to push for change despite being blocked by more conservative parties and media?

Featured speaker

Building Progressive Audiences: Podcasts, Memes and Narratives (Freddie Feltham, What's Left postcast)

Past featured speakers include:

• 2025: The rise of the far-right: A real perspective from within the working class (Craig Stewart)
• 2024: Allyship for the long term for marginalised communities, Hannah Àjàlá is an international journalist and presenter. See presentation details
• 2019: State of the nation - Just how divided are we, and how do we build bridges? Rosie Carter, HOPE not Hate
• 2018: Reaching beyond the choir, Léane de Laigue is Head of Communications at Climate Outreach

Peer workshops / presentations

1. Senior campaigning managers surgery: topic TBC. Part of Campaigning Leadership Forum stream.
2. Unlocking innovation and adaptation in campaigning - responding to the Annual Campaigner and Changemaker Survey results by Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK)
3. Cutting Through the Noise with Nuance: In the world of populist right wing 'click bait', we're constantly faced with the challenge of maintaining the integrity of our mission, whilst trying to reach new audiences and counter simplistic, emotionally led far-right messaging. A participatory workshop interrogating how to navigate this problem, looking at examples. (Abbie Jones-Walters)
4. The Renters’ Rights Act, a new era for renters: Lessons from over a decade of campaigning.: The Renters' Rights Act will transform the private renting system in England when it's implemented on 1^st May. But just ten years ago, campaigners were laughed out of rooms when calling for an end to Section 21 evictions. In this peer workshop, Nye Jones, Head of Campaigns at Generation Rent will look at the campaigning journey to get to this point of change, pulling out key lessons learnt along the way.

Examples from 2023 - 2024 events include:

1. Tactics & tools for policy campaigns to get millions (Liesbeth Van der Bossche)
2. Back to the future: using physical postcards for influencing and outreach (Duane Raymond)
3. Countering Disinformation Stream Peer Presentation: Story vs Disinformation
4. Lessons from a year of increased strike action and our campaign to protect the right to strike - Conor McGurran (Trades Union Congress)
5. Fail tales: confidential sharing of cringeworthy yet amusing failure stories
6. Newsletters: how, why, when

Teach-in: share skills or knowledge with others

1. How to counter the digital dominance of the radical right (Berry Cochrane, Forward Action)
2. More possible with participant volunteers.

Examples from 2023 & 2024 events include:

1. Craftivism: experience craftivism first hand and learn of its power (Sarah Corbett)
2. Building digital communities for online and offline mobilisation (Grace de Bláca)
3. Hands-on workshop using video to create great content
4. Campaign strategy 101 - how to develop your strategic approach, set objectives and choose tactics. Bring your issue to workshop. - Michaela O'Brien (U. of Westminster)
5. Recording and editing video on your phone for quick easy content - Zoe Broughton
6. Social storytelling method workshop (Jean O'Brien, Digital Charity Labs)
7. Adventures with AI: Using ChatGPT and other AI tools in your day (Duane Raymond, FairSay).

Ignite Talks (7 min each)

1. Sessions offered by participants
2. More to-be-determined based on participant input. Learn more about the Ignite talk format.

Examples from 2023 & 2024 events include:

1. The Magic of internal Comms - Mobilising colleagues for Action at Magic Breakfast (Ajemina Ogan)
2. Strength in numbers: The Power of a Coalition (Elinor Scanlon)
3. ‘Message for Change’ campaign action - Erin Ekins (Versus Arthritis)
4. Staying abreast of new ideas in a time poor and resource poor context. - Michaela O'Brien (U. of Westminster)
5. Using printed postcards for campaigning and winning elections - Duane Raymond (JustPost)
6. Strength in Numbers (Elinor Scanlon)
7. See what it takes to deliver an ignite-style talk.
8. The case for reuse (Keira Roth, The Developer Society)