What Is Campaigning?

Campaigning is a planned strategic effort, pulling our organised members together to push for a specific outcome.

They often follow threat to jobs, pay or conditions. That could be anything from an employer threatening redundancies or fire and rehire, to local authorities proposing to axe arts funding or end support for music education in schools, to governments allowing big tech to ride roughshod over your rights as a musician.

Successful campaigns create opportunities to stop those threats or mitigate their outcomes. They bring people together to raise awareness of an issue, develop solutions and lobby for change.

What do campaigns look like?

Campaigns have clear asks and objectives and can take many different forms depending on your goals – from motions to union conferences to lobbying governments to industrial action supported by your Musicians’ Union officials.

Do you have a campaign in your workplace?

If you think there may be a campaign in your workplace or local music community, consider the following questions:

• Is it widely and deeply felt?
• Is it winnable?
• Are there small steps you can take now?
• Are there next steps you can take if you want to do more?
• Who else is impacted by this?
• What resources would you need?
• What would a win look like?
• Is there an alternative solution to this issue?

Before you start campaigning or recruiting people to your campaign, bear in mind that a campaign isn’t always the most appropriate solution to an issue. It might be that an alternative strategy will be more effective to get a positive result.

Your union officials can work with you to figure out the best way forward based on the points above.