Grants:Project/MSIG/Changemaker's toolbox - introductory resources to campaigning and advocacy/Report

Outcomes

Aims and objectives

This project set out to produce resources to address a skills gap around advocacy within the Wikimedia movement. The aim was to create three self-led training modules covering:

1. Introduction to Campaigning and Social Change, looking at concepts of power, social change and campaigning, while highlighting the habits that make change successful at an individual and organisational level.
2. Analysing the Problem and Planning for Change, looking more concretely at a strategic and responsive approach to planning campaigns that achieve concrete change.
3. Communicating for Change, looking at how to develop powerful framing, narratives and stories for campaigns.

Wikimedia UK and the Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK) collaborated on the project, co-creating the content. This drew extensively on SMK’s experience with campaigning in a UK context, and WMUK’s knowledge of the Wikimedia community. At the core of the toolkit is a set of approaches that can be used by campaigners to bring about change. These approaches are modelled with examples suitable to the context of the anticipated audience.

Where have you published your draft plan? Share the link to it here:

The Changemakers’ Toolkit is now available online, with a version for SMK’s audiences and a version for Wikimedia audiences on Meta-Wiki and WikiLearn (account needed).

During the grant period, we have shared and amplified the materials produced in a number of ways:

• Localising content was produced on a site on Meta-Wiki, including adapting some of the changemaking case studies to a wiki context
• The toolkit was launched in March; SMK and WMUK collaborated on the launch and shared it with our respective communities
• A self-directed WikiLearn course has been created.

Upcoming opportunities to promote the toolkit include a session at Wikimania in August 2024 (which has been confirmed as part of the programme) and a ‘Let’s Connect’ session, tentatively scheduled for October. We also plan to socialise the resources with UK-based Wikimedians in Residence as part of an in-person peer network meeting.

This remains an ongoing area of work for WMUK, and the toolkit is a valuable resource that we intend to use on a continuing basis to support our volunteers and partner organisations.

What Movement Strategy initiative is this draft plan supporting?

The project addresses 32. Global Approach for Local Skill Development , and tangentially 22. Local_capacity_development_for_advocacy . Within the 2030 implementation, skills development does not include advocacy (32), while advocacy focuses narrowly on specialised public policy (22). There is a gap that this project aimed to address.

What activities have you completed to produce this draft plan?

Once the grant was confirmed, SMK and WMUK began the process of developing the content for the toolkit. As planned this was divided across three modules, each of which introduced the key topics underpinning a concept, and methods which can be applied to different situations. The content was carefully designed, beginning with storyboarding to plan the flow and structure. Fortnightly meetings between WMUK and SMK were a vital forum for co-creating the content. It also facilitated knowledge exchange between the two organisations; SMK learned more about open licensing and how to engage with the Wikimedia projects, while WMUK gained a deeper understanding of advocacy and changemaking. Being able to learn from SMK was hugely beneficial to WMUK, and will help to inform future approaches to changemaking.

Once the framework for the modules and how they would flow and interconnect was established the content was written and supporting media created. An early draft of the content was shared with a focus group of organisers within the movement. This group consisted of people who have experience of campaigning through Wikimedia, from raising awareness through campaigns such as #1Lib1Ref to advocating for cultural institutions to change the licence on their content. These were people who had experience of campaigning, so while they were not necessarily the target group for the toolkit (given their knowledge in this area) they represented the knowledge and experience that we wanted to tap into and convey to the people who use the toolkit. This was an important step in adapting the content to a Wikimedia context, and building on SMK’s vast experience of advocacy. This was a thorough review involving asynchronous feedback on the content and a live session in which we discussed appropriate case studies and exercises to reinforce learning. The content was iterated based on this feedback, improving both versions of the toolkit (the SMK-hosted toolkit and the Wikimedia localised content).

Throughout the process WMUK provided advice on copyright and how it impacted the content of the toolkit. For example, SMK works with an array of organisations who are happy to share media with SMK and for it to be reshared, however this poses a challenge regarding applying open licences. Ultimately, we settled on openly licensing content created directly by SMK where appropriate; where it incorporated footage or content under licence from another provider it could not be shared openly.

Once the content had been redrafted based on the peer group testing, a copyeditor was involved to ensure that the language was accessible. This also allowed the SMK version to tailor their content for SEO discovery, ensuring that key terms were used in headings and the body of the content.

The toolkit was launched in March via blogs, the SMK newsletter, social media, and the professional networks of the team working on the toolkit. WMUK and SMK coordinated on the promotion, providing quotes illustrative of the purpose and amplifying each other’s messages. The toolkit was also promoted through leaflets at SMK’s annual awards event.

With the content adapted to a Wikimedia specific audience, WMUK explored the possibility of integrating the toolkit with WikiLearn. As a movement-specific learning learning platform we thought it important to share it on WikiLearn; the platform would also allow for a less busy visual presentation compared to the tool hosted on meta-wiki, and allowed some different interactive elements. Hosting the tool on meta-wiki remains important as it is easier to discover and there is no barrier to entry. We hoped that hosting the toolkit on WikiLearn as well would contribute towards its development as a central resource for learning materials in the Wikimedia movement. We secured a grant extension to allow extra time and resourcing for this work.

We also gathered feedback from a test cohort. This feedback has provided valuable insight into the course. We are now able to give a better description of the time commitment of using the toolkit, which is an important aspect of making the tool accessible. It also provided some useful feedback about the activities. One of the cohort who tried the materials noted that the exercises would work better as communal activities. This resonates with an observation from SMK - while their toolkit is being used they do not have the same level of interaction with the people using it as with their traditional learning resources. Community is an important facet of changemaking as it multiplies effects and shares the workload; as noted in the toolkit, solo efforts can be tiring so having a group of people can be more rewarding. We don’t know the answer to this yet: it may be a case that the toolkit remains an asynchronous tool but WMUK could offer live equivalents through the year. The WikiLearn platform offers ways to communicate with people using the toolkit which may be a way to address this issue. The most satisfying piece of feedback is that the content was relevant to Wikimedians and they could see this being useful in their work.

In which community channels have you announced your draft plan?

General:

• Joint launch and press release for external audiences

WMUK - activities that have taken place:

• Knowledge exchange between SMK, WMUK, and Let’s Connect staff
• Community consultation with key invited stakeholders run jointly with SMK. This led to extensive comments on the draft content.
• Consultation with WikiLearn.
• Discussion around the Organiser Lab (Alex Stinson)
• Consultation with Let’s Connect
• Brainstorm and consultation with the advocacy team at WMF
• Talk at Wikimania 2023, connected to key interested stakeholders (link)
• Discussion with the ED of Wikimedia Europe

Reflections and learning on the activities delivered within the grant

It has been a long-held ambition of SMK to create a free offer for changemakers. It is a key part of our strategy as well as our Solidarity and EDI plan. It is a significant step towards our goal of empowering and supporting all changemakers- especially with a significant year of campaigning on the horizon.

Moving between national and global contexts

It was particularly good to see Wikimedia staff approve of tools very easily. For us, this is very validating and opens exciting opportunities for how we can continue to share these tools widely - particularly the Social Change Grid. It would be great to reflect on areas of commonality in social change across the world, although this is a big question! For SMK, it is important for us to understand how we can continue to develop content that speaks to such a wide audience, and where our work is quite UK-focused. It will be interesting to see feedback on the content on Wikimedia’s platform and understand how it is being received by changemakers in a global context.

Developing with accessibility in mind

A key question in this project has been how to create an engaging digital platform that is accessible to the widest number of people, but also visually engaging. This is solely on SMK’s side of things as Wikimedia has its own standard look. This has needed to be a compromise as we have gone for AA accessibility, not AAA. It may be that as we grow the platform, we need to have a wider variety of content to cater to all accessibility needs, as well as learning styles.

Developing content for this platform

We have to consider the significant difference in how SMK content is usually shared (through in person facilitation) and this platform. This will affect which modules we decide to develop in future. We need to be aware of how content is received in our training sessions and how often it might need clarification. For example, I know that our Solidarity work sometimes benefits from a conversation clarifying what we mean by power. Before we adapt this module, we would need to carry out testing on the content to make sure it can be easily understood by a wide variety of users.

Working with Wikimedia

This relationship has been a very positive one. Richard and Daria (and now Natasha) are great team members and easy to work with. However, it has been difficult at times to understand exactly what our relationship is to each other. The WMF are the funders of this project, but we are also working together on their content for their platform.

If I were to restart this project, I would take more time at the start to understand what the ideal outcomes are for each half. As I took on this project, this felt like the most unclear thing. I hadn’t initially considered that Wikimedia might need some support with the translation of our content, or that our audiences would be so different. Taking more time to understand each other’s organisations would have allowed us to have more in depth conversations about our different audiences earlier, and have a clearer understanding of how we could support each other.

Finances

Grant funds spent

The spend matches budget as proposed:

• SMK content editorial, developing materials and writing copy - $11,250 (c. £9,000) - broken down into staff time and graphics:
  • Staff costs: (£8,050)
    • Deputy Chief Executive - 8 days
    • Head of Programmes - 18 days
    • Programme Manager - 8 days
  • Images and graphics: £950
• SMK service design input (commissioned) - $5,625 (c. £4,500)
• SMK web development and design (commissioned) - $5,625 (c. £4,500)
• WMUK copyright guidance - $2,500 (c. £2,000)
• WMUK staff time - $4,989 (£3,934.89):
  • Head of Programmes: 12 days £3,209.08
  • Additional Programme Manager: 2 days; £353.78

Total - $29,989

Remaining funds

There are no remaining funds - all the relevant funds have been disbursed to SMK and the extension funding agreed in March has been spent on WMUK staff time further enhancing the toolkit.

Anything else

WMUK and SMK are excited to have worked together on this project. We believe that this addresses a need within the Wikimedia community. For WMUK, this enhances the support we offer our volunteers and partners by providing them with tools they can use in their work. Advocacy and changemaking is an important part of many partnerships and the toolkit will mean that more volunteers have the confidence to engage in this area.

Following the launch of the toolkit, WMUK and SMK considered how we may collaborate further in this area. The ambition is that we can respond to feedback and develop these learning resources. Already analytics on engagement with the SMK-hosted toolkit have prompted reflections about providing recognition for people who have used the toolkit. The approach considered is informed from the Wikimedia practice of awarding barnstars for a particular activity. This has sparked ideas amongst the SMK team about how to incentivise people to complete the modules by giving people a way to demonstrate that they have acquired a new skill. We have also discussed potential new topics for modules and would like to discuss this further. We anticipate continuing this conversation in the autumn.