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Why did @jrf_uk decide we must focus on reframing poverty? It started with the change we want to make in the UK: solving poverty. That requires large scale, long term action from governments (UK, devolved, local) + businesses and employers +communities, service providers etc.1/10 https://twitter.com/mroutled/status/1329363480051412992
It requires investment + redesigning systems around us (labour market, housing market, services, social security, tax etc). And to be sustained over years. It has to stick when governments change, when the economy goes up and down, when times are tough. Our evidence...2/10
& experience over years convinced us that we could not achieve that scale of change, or keep it going, without real public support. I saw child poverty fall significantly and then watched the policies reversed and child poverty rise with no public outcry or political cost. 3/10
People with direct experience of poverty were also clear that the stigma, prejudice and discrimination they faced made their lives harder and locked them more tightly in poverty. So we agreed that building public and political will for action on poverty was a priority. 4/10
Next question: why had no one managed to do it sufficiently? Brilliant campaigners & charities had been advocating for years but it wasn't creating necessary demand for action. Public attitudes were pretty negative about poverty, people in poverty and policies to solve it. 5/10
So we commissioned research ( @FrameWorksInst & @TheNickyHawkins) to understand how public thought about poverty & what effective communication and campaigning would look like. That was revelatory. It nailed why campaigning wasn't working with the public or decision-makers 6/10
And it gave us the tools to try out to get our messages to land & to build understanding of poverty and support for action on it. It explained why the messages we thought we were communicating were not being understood as we intended. Since then we've been working w others 7/10
to improve how we communicate, as part of a much wider strategy to build public and political will, to co-design solutions with people in poverty and with the public, to create alliances, to achieve small incremental changes and build towards big transformative changes. 8/10
Framing is just evidence-based communication. For me it's about value, impact & ethics. If we carry out/fund research & then communicate it badly then it isn't good value for money and doesn't build knowledge. If we amplify the voices of people in poverty without offering 9/10
good advice about how best to communicate their views then we've wasted their time and emotional energy and opened them up to being attacked instead of understood. If our campaigning isn't effective then we fail the people whose lives we exist to improve. Hope that helps! 10/10
