UK Communities Circle: People's Assemblies

In late 2020 and early 2021, the UK Communities team hosted a monthly People's Assembly on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. This book holds summaries from each. Bringing together the questions asked, key points from the feedback and any actions which will be taken in response. If you are interested in helping us run these sessions or want more information please drop us an email at xrcommunities@gmail.com

How can strategy best serve me and the wider movement?

Date: 16th December 2020

Context

The movement is currently going through the process of building our next strategy to bring us into the new year. The strategy process itself can be followed in this book. This assembly aims to get rebels talking about strategy and inform those sitting on the UKSA as to the reality of opinions across the movement.

Input

The input for this session just went through a few definitions of strategy and tactics to orient the assembly on what specifically we are talking about. We also touched on where we currently are in term of the Strategy Process.

Strategy Definitions
Principles of Strategy

These are personal and vary between groups and organisations, what are your principles? The following are some of the principles used in the past to form XR strategy.

Where we Are

There are currently two things you may have come across around strategy.

These are both strategies being worked on, they don’t necessarily contradict each other, rather one is more focused on a single aspect of XR. This gives us an interesting example of how Movement wide strategy can work for us.

An action strategy can lay out a path for doing actions which furthers the movement wide strategy. Similarly a nation or region could produce a strategy for how they plan to use their resources to further the movement wide strategic goals.


Question

Feedback

There was overwhelmingly aligned feedback from the breakout groups. Many important points came up and were repeated by several groups. Below is a summary of the recurring themes.

Main Points

These themes came up repeatedly by the vast majority of the Breakout Groups.

Some Other Points on the Content of Strategy
Some Points on the Delivery of a Strategy
Other things mentioned

Actions

Communities heard the feedback here and will at minimum take the following actions:

How do we recruit, welcome and keep more new rebels?

Date: 20th January 2021

Context

Covid has been hard on us for so many reasons and many groups have found it harder to recruit and retain new rebels as people turn their attention to immediate problems. However January is traditionally the time when people make plans to take action on the things that matter to them. XR's vision of change involves mass participation; how can we bring people into our movement - and keep them?

Input

Around 70 people attended the assembly. Everything below is feedback from the assembly; we've tried to capture the main ideas in order of the number of times they were mentioned.

Toolkit team note:

We have linked some of the sections which exist in the Toolkit which could inspire you. If you have extra ideas do get in touch with the Toolkit Team via Mattermost. The links are in green.

1. Our own experience

Why did we join?

Why did we stay?

When did we feel part of XR?

2. Ideas on growing the movement

How do we bring more people into XR?

How do we help new rebels feel part of XR?

How do we help 'sleeping' rebels re-engage?

Action and Disruption

Date: 17th March 2021

Context

What kind of disruption should XR be doing, and what is appropriate and proportionate to meet our demands? Disruption in all its forms has been the heart of XR’s actions, intentions and largely the movement’s huge impact on raising the alarm about the climate and ecological emergency! Over its short lifetime XR has evolved into a vibrant, diverse and expansive movement with huge resources to adapt, reflect and (un)learn, as we have responded to the ever-changing crises faced around the world, as well as at home in the UK. As XRUK prepares to emerge from the pandemic we have a huge opportunity to build back, bolder and brighter than before.

Input

Toolkit team note:

We have linked some of the sections which exist in the Toolkit which could inspire you. If you have extra ideas do get in touch with the Toolkit Team via Mattermost. The links are in green.