My Café Campaign Thoughts on the Election

By Emma Buckmaster

When I was selected to stand as the local parliamentary candidate for the Green Party I had very little knowledge about how campaigns were run.

The Green Party said that I could do as much or as little as I wanted to. I would be invited to attend hustings, deal with the media and respond to pledge emails. I would need to produce some photos and a CV or back story, for publicity. Because the election was called unexpectedly, I along with most candidates also would have to start campaigning without a manifesto.

Luckily, as an artist I am trained to think outside the box.

How could I do this differently? What would capture people’s imagination? How could I reach out to young people? How does one campaign with no budget?

**How to reach out to young voters**? This was the challenge that interested me most.

Before the election was announced I had already reached out to the sixth form colleges in the constituency to see how I might engage with pupils. I did a talk during careers week about Art and Politics and I tried an informal visit inviting pupils to meet me and ask questions. I soon realised that I needed to learn more about how Gen Z engaged with politics.

I decided to offer a work experience opportunity which would give the pupils the chance to follow a prospective parliamentary candidate through the election process and in return I hoped to learn how we might be able to engage better with their generation. I set an initial challenge for pupils and then interviewed them and picked three students who were genuinely interested. After that we were able to have a weekly meeting online and depending on their school workload I gave them some research to do and then we were able to discuss the outcome.

I hope that they learnt a lot about the political process. I, in turn, began to see how young voters looked to different sources for their political information.

**How to do this differently**?
No door knocking, cold calling and leafleting. I didn’t have the funds or the people to follow the normal campaigning route. However, somehow I had to get some information out and give people a chance to meet me or at least know more about me and the Green Party.

The result was the **Cafe Campaign**!

Suffolk is full of small cafes, many of which are run by local groups as community hubs. I set about visiting as many of these as possible. I used social media to advertise where I would be and then again to air issues that I discovered when I was there. I also recorded other places that I visited along the way and talked about what I found.

Of course, 6 weeks was not really long enough to put this plan into action but it did quickly gain traction.

Money was the other challenge. Does campaigning have to be about how much you can spend? I rather idealistically wanted to prove that it would be possible to run a campaign without money. However, I don’t think that I succeeded here. It seemed that generally the might and resources of the larger parties prevailed. Although the Green Party managed to win their 4 seats, it cost them everything they had.

Was I disillusioned by the political process? Yes and No.

I was very impressed with the way that the election was managed. The counting of the votes is so transparent. We were well informed. The rules are clear. Everything possible is in place to make the democratic vote as fair as possible.

Yet, somehow it is not.

There are many articles being written about this at the moment. The ‘first past the post’ system is of course a major issue. The influence of the media is another. There is a feeling of distance between the voter and the candidate which in turn leads to a lack of trust.

But when you can actually sit and talk to people that falls away - because winning the trust of the people in the constituency is really what it should be all about.