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.
2026 Speakers focus on timely sector issues
Speakers are invited to contribute on specific current and sector issues. In 2026 we’ll be looking into the emerging issues based on sector concerns and applicant input. The rise of the far right is one of them.
In 2024 & 2025 the speakers topics were:
- 2025: Gentle Protest Limiting polarisation in our protests”
- 2024: Preparing for a likely change in the UK government
- 2023: How to integrate local organising with digital mobilisation, plus learning from inclusion, digital transformation and countering fake news.
Topic continuity
A few key topics run through speakers and discussions (a stream/track).
The focuses in 2026 are
- Implications for a new world era
- Countering disinformation and the far right
- Engaging local communities
Day 1: Katie Roberts and Alex Jones, Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK)
Campaigning at a crossroads: How do we respond as a community?
Campaigners are feeling the strain and the SMK Annual Campaigner Survey shows just how
deep it goes. Rising hostility, shrinking civic space, precarious safety, and dwindling capacity are pushing many to the edge. Yet beneath the anxiety lies something powerful: campaigners are using hope as strategy, and collaboration as fuel.
This session invites the campaigning community to make sense of the moment together. The
Sheila McKechnie Foundation will present some of the findings from 10 years of their annual
campaigner survey and invite us to reflect on what these findings mean for how we lead,
organise, and support one another?
If 2026 is a turning point, what should campaigning organisations do differently and what should we do together?
Are we ready for the scale of change the context demands?
What might it take to shift from “getting by” to building a stronger campaigning ecosystem?
We will discuss the implications, interrogate the recommendations, and start building our
response together.
2026: To be confirmed.
In 2025 the speakers were Sarah P Corbett and Craig Stewart
Once the day two speaker is decided it will be updated here.
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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