Overview

The goal of this one-day workshop is to provide participants with practical tools to implement communications strategies that use narrative and framing to change attitudes and shift debates.

It will widen perspectives from today’s immediate challenges, opening up longer-term responses to the populist challenge where NGOs seek to promote attitude change.

This will be a practical workshop to identify common values and a vision for Portugal that can form the basis for shared narrative strategy moving forward. The exercises are designed to create concrete ideas that can form the basis for further testing and iteration, while also providing some simple re-usable techniques for creating new positive messages.

The day will include a presentation of campaign examples and replicable tactics, as well as exercises such as:

Exercise 1: From fear to hope - foresight exercise to identify signals of positive change and future possibilities. This exercise will shift the focus of participants to see a more empowering alternative future, laying the foundation for strategies set by our vision rather than the actions of our opponents.

Exercise 2: From threat to opportunity - exploring the framing gap. Participants will develop audience personas, identifying what they think compared to what we want them to know. Developing audience personas that articulate their wider hopes and fears, beyond current campaign issues.

Exercise 3: From what we are against to what we are for - bringing our values to life. This exercise will articulate our core beliefs and what would it look like to act on our values, so that we can build our communications upon a formula of “Shared Values-Problem-Solution”.

Exercise 4: From problem to solution: This will challenge us to show people the world we want to see, by “Imagining the Win”, so that we can sell the solutions we want implemented and find language that makes see how they will work.

Exercise 5: From victims to heroes: A storytelling exercises that will identify the messengers we need and how we can tell the stories that bring our values and narratives to life moving forward.
 

Facilitator’s bio:

Thomas Coombes is a global communications strategist who aims to make a difference by changing minds. He has developed an approach called Hope-Based Communications to help the Human Rights movement develop new narratives for social change. Currently Head of Brand and Deputy Communications Director at Amnesty International, Thomas’s personal mission is to help NGOs communicate as effectively as politicians and businesses. Before joining Amnesty International, he spent a decade working in communications for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, the European Commission and PR firm Hill & Knowlton. Thomas is a proud Global Campus Alumus with an EMA in Human Rights.

Registration fees:
€100 – General.
€75 – Partnerships.

CES coordinator: Carla Luís
Parallel event to the CES Summer School «Human Rights today: Foundations, challenges and opportunities»