The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their DACA from their ACA.
This week we’ve got a jam-packed Weekly, with a piece about what the decline of young drivers means for British politics and a report that maps online news consumption. And from the serious to the absurd, we bring you news of the worst date ever – but we won’t spoil it for you, you’ll have to click through to find out more.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, which this week turns into a museum of the history of humankind – it spans from the Bronze Age with the discovery that women were the chief adventurers to a world of hand-held-free suitcases not too far into the future, with a pit-stop featuring the Selkirk yarn-bombers.
David Evans
Director
If you see a link that belongs in The Weekly then email it to us and we’ll give you a free TCC exclamation mark to say thanks.
What the decline of young drivers tells us about politics
Driving has for decades been central to British cultural life. For many baby boomers, the transition from being a dependent teenager to an independent adult meant getting past the hurdle of that dreaded test and saving up to buy your first car.
Of course, technological and social change always influences politics – and so, if Thatcher’s policy agenda was in part driven (no pun intended) by the aspirational culture made emblematic by the culture of car ownership, what does the decline of car use (especially among young people) mean for politics nowadays? This fascinating piece by The New Statesman’s George Eaton explores that question. Interestingly, he says that the Labour party may understand the road ahead (we are sorry – that will be the last awful pun) better than the Tories.
How Labour generated 10 times more in membership fees than the Tories
Coalition-building and social change
Image from source
What does good engagement look like? How do you build strong relationships to effect positive change?
This week blogger Duncan Green covers a book by Matthew Bolton of Citizens UK that seeks to provide an answer. At the nub of How to Resist is the argument that it’s all about embracing power: “we must rid ourselves of the negative associations with power”, Bolton argues, “so that we start to want power as much as we want change”.
The argument has implications for local authorities and in fact any organisation that seeks to engage people to make change possible. The bottom line is that if you want to see change happen, then you need power. And power in turn comes from building strong relationships with diverse stakeholders and audiences.
The book’s arguments mirror many of the ideas we put forward in our New Conversations guide. In it we provide a number of tools local authorities and others can use to build effective relationships with communities. Click here to find out more.
The Values Lab is based on the Values Modes segmentation tool – created by Cultural Dynamics and used by TCC– which divides the population into ethics-driven Pioneers, aspirational Prospectors, and threat-wary Settlers. Take the test here to see which you are.
“Wish we could turn back time…
“…to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we're stressed out
Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we're stressed out”
Image taken from source
The escalating threat of nuclear war and the rise of extreme weather events can make today’s world feel like a frightening place. In light of these developments, the power of nostalgia – the longing to return to a better time yore – might have special appeal.
We thought we’d look at how different values groups view the past and the present. And so we looked at the extent of agreement with the statement “I believe that society has lost its way. I would like to live in a time where there is more mystery, romanticism and adventure”.
“I believe that society has lost its way. I would like to live in a time where there is more mystery, romanticism and adventure.”
% who xx
Pioneers
Prospectors
Settlers
Not at all/not like me
26%
17%
14%
A little/quite like me
52%
52%
50%
Like me/very much like
23%
30%
36%
Socially conservative Settlers are the most nostalgic, whilst hopeful and liberal Pioneers sit on the other side of the spectrum. Interestingly, aspirational Prospectors sit in the middle – torn as they often are between more conservative and optimistic impulses.
