Campaigning through Covid: 2021 in review
Written by Charlie Gold and Emily Higlett.
There’s a key to social movements in the title — they depend on the social.
Reliant on group participation, contingent on footfall and voiced by collective chant, campaigning has always been — has always had to be — an activity for the masses. So, when the world shunned the social and forced us behind closed doors, many of us in the Campaign Champions network — a group of volunteer Save the Children campaigners spanning the length and width of the country — struggled to see a way forward.
When usually we’d meet behind petition stalls, we met behind Zoom screens. When preferably we’d gather outside Parliament and shout our voices out, instead we sent our voices out — digitally, via email. Without warning, an activity we took for granted, being able to campaign together and as one, was deemed unsafe. Paradoxically, campaigning became a task for the individual.
Yet, despite the seemingly impossible conditions of an anti-social, anti-campaign year, 2021 has proved to be the year of the campaign. Whether writing for relief in Yemen, collating a scrapbook of solidarity for the children of the Rohingya, urging MPs to save UK aid, or calling for children to be heard at COP26 — the world may have stopped, but we have not.
Like so many aspects of our daily routines, what began as a chore became a chance — a chance to reinvent what we gauge as campaigning and reimagine how we mobilise. The barrier of being unable to meet in person became an opportunity to reach audiences we couldn’t previously reach, breaking beyond the parameters of our constituencies and engaging people in ways a petition or a print-out never could.
Some of us started writing blogs, shareable online and readable at leisure, to convey a message with creativity rather than callouts. Others started Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages, mobilising mass group campaigns through likes and shares, in the absence of flyers and chants. Others still turned campaigns into crafts, designing posters and handprints to plaster on windows and news feeds, a virtual ‘Wave of Hope’ that reconnected thousands across the country just when they’d never felt so apart.
Above all, we learned that campaigning isn’t just about the campaign. Whether a plea for children’s rights abroad or an appeal for support for families at home, a successful campaign is built on the people behind it. No matter the cause nor the circumstances, campaigning is about engaging, and the opportunities for engagement online are endless. It’s not just the workplace that becomes more flexible when digital; so too does advocacy, extended beyond the remit of those active on the streets and accessible to all. 55.5 million people in the UK own a smartphone — unexpectedly, the social movement this year became that bit more social. When all it takes is a click or a tap to join a campaign, it’s never been easier to participate.
Of course, traditional campaigning can never be replaced. The power of the crowd is tangible, its impact far more obvious when visualisable. Momentum is key, and footage of marches or footfall at community events hold far more potential to snowball into significant impact than a rising follower count or retweeted campaign ask.
But campaigning through Covid has shown us that, taken together, these assets of physical campaigns are exactly that — assets, not essentials. We’ve proven to ourselves that campaigning isn’t just for enthusiasts with a free schedule; that mobilising isn’t just for extroverts with a megaphone; and, above all, that organising isn’t just for activists with incomparable energy. It’s for everyone, no matter how or what you choose to make of it.
We all need a Christmas break (with an extra roast potato). It’s been a troubled year for children, who remain in intractable conflicts across the globe, neglected in climate negotiations and forgotten in decisions. Campaigning is never easy, the wins are often small, and the fight is always fierce. But, when we return in the new year, we’ll remember the successes as much as the struggles of 2021. We’ll reflect on the skills that we found and the tools that we wielded, and we’ll return, optimistic, to the campaign-ground — equipped with a newfound resilience that can only advance the causes for which we’ll continue to fight.
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