Theme tunes for fresh campaigns

From slimmer bins in the backyard to mining the past in Stoke-on-Trent, Going for Green’s theme months are striking chords across the country, claims Janice McGrath.

At a time when everything from theme pubs to theme parks are proving a hit with the public, the rather novel idea of themed campaigning also looks to be a winner. It’s not difficult to see why.

The challenge facing many of us with a public information role is how to communicate that somewhat obscure concept of sustainable development in a way that will interest and engage people. This is a task that has exercised us at Going for Green since we were first established as an awareness-raising charity back in 1996. One of the first things we did was to break messages down into "five easy pieces", which became the "Green Code". This simple five-point plan for sustainable living contains practical tips that we would challenge anybody not to be able to follow - switching off the TV standby, reusing shopping bags, walking and cycling a little more often: this isn’t rocket science, most of it is common sense.

But as we all know, messages have to be reinforced to be understood. Hence the idea of concentrating on one aspect of the Green Code at a time soon became the natural progression in the development of the Going for Green campaign. So the "theme months" were born, and having just completed their first full cycle, we are now ideally placed to reflect on their performance.

The idea of the theme months is to bring co-ordination and consistency to the various environmental campaigns that run throughout the year. We’ve found they provide a valuable focus for publicity and support and enable everyone involved - environmental groups, local authorities, central government and business - to join together to give out the same clear messages. Working groups with representatives from all these sectors plan each of the theme months.

The 1999 ones produced some innovative campaigns, largely through imaginative partnerships and the support of some of the leading companies in the field. Nowhere was this approach more in evidence than in the south-east of England during waste theme month, when Going for Green worked with 12 local authorities and 28 families on the "Slim Your Bin" challenge. This set out to discover just how much waste an ordinary family produces in a week - and how much of this it can reuse. Although not exactly a scientific study, the results gave a helpful insight into the barriers and opportunities for cutting down on household waste. Equally importantly, the challenges were widely covered in the media, so those tricky messages of reduce, reuse and recycle were conveyed to people in a way that actually had some bearing on their daily life.

An environmental campaign can stretch much wider than such ‘core’ green issues, though. Take Living Heritage Day, a special event set aside as part of Biodiversity Month to link older generations with younger ones. Backed by the University of the Third Age and the Women’s Institute, it brought children and their grandparents or older friends together to consider the richness of their local inheritance - the idea being that the more you know about an area, the greater will be your concern for it. Those aims were well encapsulated in Stoke-on-Trent, where Living Heritage Day took on a special meaning and poignancy due to the town’s mining history, borne out when local schoolchildren performed a play on the basis of stories supplied by their grandparents.

Plans for this year include expanding Living Heritage Day into a whole week (15-21 April), and building a water heritage weekend from 26-29 May into our ‘water month’. Our experience in 1999 has convinced us that ‘themed campaigning’ really has a practical role to play, not only in raising public awareness of green realities, but, crucially, helping people see that they can actually do something to improve the quality of their lives by enhancing their local environment.

Variations on a theme

The theme months are:

• April - Biodiversity
• May - Water
• June - Transport (linked to the Don’t Choke Britain Campaign)
• October - Waste
• The fifth element of the Green Code - saving energy - is covered by the existing energy efficiency campaigns that run in October and November.

17 October 2001

Janice McGrath