Closing the Lab – Lessons Learned Event

Events

On November 18, 2019, we got together to learn the lessons of the Reframe the Debate! Project, celebrate what’s been achieved and mark the close of the project.

In attendance were Narrative Change Lab participants, donors and supporters, mentors and trainers, as well as those who wanted to learn about the project and its lessons. This latter group even included a delegation from Kazakhstan, attending to exchange lessons on communications and bringing their own campaign experiences.

The event began with ICPA Director Lisa Quinn looking back at everything that the Narrative Change Lab achieved, including these impressive numbers:

Lisa also shared evidence of the popularity of the 12 Keys (with humans and animals alike!).

In two panel discussions we heard from Lab participants Alice Lanzke, Nasiha Ahyoud, Astrid Ziebarth, Nadia Wernli and Karim El-Helaifi about their experiences and lessons learned, including from the roll out of JUMA’s "Together Human" (#gemeinsammenschlich) campaign.

Top lessons included:

Know your target audience – this can’t just be ‘everybody’, it should be defined, and you should get to know them well.
Values unite, issues divide – even with challenging audiences it is often possible to find a value space that you also feel authentic messaging on.
It’s not what you say, it’s what you trigger – test in advance so you can check if you’re triggering a frame you don’t want to trigger!
Bring others gently on board with campaigning to the “movable middle” – people need to understand why you think this is important, and that the other tactics of mobilising the base and naming the extremes are important too.
Getting the campaign content right matters, but it’s not the only thing you need – you also need to be ready to respond when the campaign goes live and have a media strategy in place.

Through an ‘Open Space’ session, we had free time to speak to the creators of the JUMA campaign and the “Speak by Deeds” campaign from MediaNet in Kazakhstan. More in Common (represented by Falco Hüsson) also shared striking facts from their latest study: “Fault Lines: Germany’s Invisible Divides” (2019). It was fun to ask questions in an informal setting and hear lessons being exchanged between German and Kazakh practitioners.

In the closing session, Tanja Florath, representative from the Integration Unit of the German Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, shared that the Reframe the Debate! project has shown that it is possible to have more constructive dialogue about challenging topics like migration. She called on Lab alumni to continue the work and take the approach further, to politicians and the media.

ICPA then shared the exciting news that we will be continuing supporting activists and campaigners through our new programme, the Strategic Communications Incubator. We are beginning with a collaboration with CLAIM Allianz, to support their network to professionalise their communications and change narratives on Islam and Muslims in Germany. The project is called RESET: New strategic communications to reset the Islam narrative in Germany and will run 2020-24.

In the final Keynote Address, Frank Sharry from Welcoming America shared his lessons from over 30 years of campaigning experience:

He spoke about the need for capacity – to have enough people working on communications to create “surround sound, volume and velocity”.
He described his counterintuitive optimism that the American public is actually rejecting xenophobic narratives and not allowing right-wing populists to divide them by Race and Class.
He gave the call to action to develop strategic communications as the “cutting edge” of our work – because if we can’t vocalise what we’re about, all the other work falls short.
Finally, Frank said that although it may not feel heroic, this work is vital – it the “fight for the soul of civilisation” – whether or not we are going to live our values, that all humans that deserve equality, freedom and justice.

Encouraged and inspired, we entered into the evening’s celebratory Reception, with drinks, delicious food from Haus 11 Catering, selfies and lots more conversation.

The full agenda from the event is available here.