Introducing Town Takeovers
Funding Our Future
Last year we took our messages out into the community and with hundreds of students participating we managed to get coverage of our messages around the broken system to thousands of people which was brilliant but that is not enough.
If we are going to win a fairer funding system we need to be campaigning beyond the union building and with communities – that is the only way this campaign will be won.
Building on last year’s day of action we have developed a template to enable unions to take over their town or city with the help of NUS. We have planned an itenary for the first term that will see NUS travel across the country to visit and campaign with ten cities.
NUS has decided to visit and organise ten cities but the hope is that other unions will use the tools we’ve developed to organise their own takeovers in the second term. We had a number of criteria when determining which towns would have the best impact for the campaign. We looked at the student vote, swing constituencies, who we wanted to influence, where we had capacity to support these events, where there was a big student population from a number of institutions and a strong regional media presence. The hope is that these events will be regional and that other unions will attend and gain insights into how to organise their own takeovers. These activities will be supplemented by toolkits, by the summer training programme and by a campaign skills event in September.
For these days to be a success unions will need to start organising within their local communities to build up a base of supporters who will attend the town hall meetings and get involved in all the campaign activities and stunts on this day and in the lead up to this day. It is crucial that we demonstrate we have support form the public so we will need to show that parents, future students, councillors, community leaders, teachers, lecturers, volunteers and public servants all support students. We can not win this fight alone. For us the challenge is to get out and talk to people and their values and get them to act with us in the campaign to Fund Our Future.
At the present a template of possible activities looks like this.
Example Agenda
12:00 – 15:00. Media Interviews (Local media will be contacted beforehand to arrange interviews in this period.)
Stunt on campus
15:00 – 16:00. Debate at local Sixth Form College
Photo opportunity
16:00 – 18:00. Further media interviews
18:00 – 19:00. Preparation for the town hall debate
19:00 – 20:00. Town hall debate
Photos with the great and the good
20:00 – 21:00. Drinks reception
21:00 Onwards. Further media interviews including late night phone ins.
Day Two
08:00 – 09:00. Leafleting at commuter hub
09:00 – 11:00. Meetings with school principle, PTA, business leaders and other high profiled local people.
11:00. Leave city
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