Course Catalogue

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This course offers a taster menu of ways to do politics and invites you to engage in political action. The course will confront you with competing perspectives on political power and change, and prompt you to reconcile these perspectives and build empathy across ideological divides. The course focuses on political 'insider' groups such as politicians, civil servants and journalists, and 'outsider' groups such as campaign organisations and social and grassroots movements. Representatives of these different groups run practitioner-led workshops, which are complemented by practice weeks including simulations, case studies of political actions, and campaigning tasks. For the assessments, you will work in groups to design a campaign strategy and materials and will then reflect individually on the campaign that you created.

■ 11 x weekly 1-hour lectures incorporating 3 framework and reflection lectures (weeks 1, 6 and 11) and 8 practitioner presentations and Q&A sessions (weeks 2 to 5 and 7 to 10)

■ 10 x weekly 2-hour tutorials applying learning through simulations and campaign-focused activities

■ 10 x weekly 1-hour optional drop-in sessions offering Q&A-based guidance from the course coordinator and supported group work

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■ Collaborative team-based campaign strategy (30%, 2,000 words).

■ Collaborative team-based campaign materials portfolio (30%, varied materials so no word count).

■ Individual reflective campaign evaluation (40%, 1,000 words).

This course aims to give you an understanding of how to campaign for and bring about political change locally, nationally, and globally. It gives you different perspectives on who has power, how to use it, and what is needed for change to occur. Run by the John Smith Centre, the course offers insights from people working in a range of sectors relating to politics, including journalism, business, and charities, with the aim of prompting you to think critically about power and change. The course also aims to equip you with the negotiation and collaboration skills needed to produce a campaign strategy and materials in a team. As well as the practical skills involved in producing the materials, the course also aims to develop your communication skills around the campaign and its target audiences. Finally, the course aims to develop your cognition skills through justifying and evaluating your campaign, how it speaks to its target audiences, and how it relates to your own life and appeals to you. Aligning with the John Smith Centre's focus on opening doors to public and political life for all, including marginalised groups, the campaign activities of the course will focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to reduce inequality within and among countries.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

■ Negotiate and collaborate in diverse groups, including navigating political divides, competing priorities and ideas, and different approaches to working

■ Create campaign strategies and a range of campaign materials collaboratively, and provide justification for the decisions that shaped both

■ Communicate campaign ideas, priorities and demands or requests in person and digitally, including across political divides

■ Evaluate campaigns, including how they seek to bring about change, who their target audiences are, and how they relate to your life and appeal to you