Campaigning with Common Cause

This in from friend of Rhizome, Casper ter Kuile:

Download these details as a pdf

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Communicate and connect for common cause

In July the Common Cause Handbook, from which the quotation below is taken, was added to the original Common Cause report (along with lots of other nice stuff on the valuesandframes.org website)

“Social and environmental concern and action, it turns out, are based on more than simply access to the facts (a finding that may seem obvious, but has often proven difficult to fully acknowledge). In reality, both seem to be motivated above all by a particular set of underlying values”

Now there’s Finding Common Cause, the Training: A residential workshop for communicators and connectors, February 8^th-10^th 2012. At this workshop you will be able to:

• Consolidate your understanding of Common Cause principles and applications
• Explore participatory learning and facilitation methods and get ‘hands-on’ with our Common Cause workshop activities
• Develop practical ideas for engaging others about Common Cause in your network/sector/organisation
• Become part of a network of Common Cause communicators and catalysers

A friend of this blog, Casper ter Kuile is on the team bringing you the workshop and if his energy and excitement for the workshop is anything to go by, it should be good.

Sharing values, Graphic Guides and Common Cause

Following our earlier phone meeting which I blogged about at the time, I met with Steph and Jeannie today to progress work on creating “effective meeting” resources for Transition initiatives.

Steph and her son have produced a great 3 minute video – a Graphic Guide to Groups which draws on John Adair’s action centred leadership but adds a values twist:

There’s the promise of more to come.

Steph’s also created a values-mapping activity that helps groups sort out what are their group values and what are their personal values. I plan to try it out soon and will report back on the blog.

This took us on to discussing the dangers of values-based groups. It’s a short hop, skip and jump from values to high horses and a fundamentalism of sorts. In short we can become judgemental and that alienates people. The values of compassion, common humanity, diversity, and open-mindedness can sometimes get lost.

And whilst we’re talking values, we also spent a little time talking about the Common Cause report which explores campaigning from a values standpoint, and more particularly campaigning in a way that reinforces the more selfless values. If we’re going to make bigger-than-self changes we need to appeal to bigger-than-self values.