“I’m never going to vote. All the parties are corrupt”
The above statement is a familiar view that many young people share, but ThinkNation's collaboration with Use Your Voice set out to change the narrative for the UK's General Election in 2017.
Empowering young people to vote
Capture authentic voices
Journalist and filmmaker, Billie JD Porter, travelled the country to speak to young people from diverse backgrounds about the big issues and their engagement with the political process. Capturing the conversations in Use Your Voice, a short documentary (see below), the overwhelming response was that not only did young people have a view, they had questions, concerns, ideas and confusions. They also wanted to find answers.
Empower and educate
ThinkNation interrogated the main issues and questions young people asked and explored in the documentary, and set out to help answer them. Crucially, the questions young people were asking weren’t insignificant: they were fundamental to the understanding of the democratic process and tackling political disenfranchisement of the younger generation.
These questions included:
- What is a General Election?
- What is a ‘government’?
- What are Members of Parliament?
The outcome? Working with PhD candidates in Politics at the University of Kent, and journalist Sophie Wilkinson, we created a politically neutral online ‘toolkit‘ that helped educate and inform young people about democracy, voting – and wider political structures and terms.
Encourage debate – in the real world
Bringing together young people from the documentary live on stage with Summit host Billie, we held a Use Your Voice event mixed with the screening of the documentary, talks and audience discussions with 16 thought leaders from across politics, journalism, digital and creative industries. The event addressed the state of political engagement with young people across the UK, and saw the launch of the toolkit – and ambitious #useyourvoice digital campaign…
Ignite the touchpaper
#useyourvoice digital campaign ran alongside the event. Huge designers such as Simone Rocha, Kim Jones and Shrimps created graphic assets for a list of over 500 of the biggest British names in fashion, art, music and film to share on social media, both alerting young people of the deadline to register to vote, and voting day itself.
The #useyourvoice digital campaign was shared by some huge global influencers, including:
- Cara Delevinge: 41m Instagram followers
- Emma Watson: 28m Twitter followers
- Nick Grimshaw: 2.3m Twitter followers
- Florence Welch: 1m Twitter followers
Impact:
- 100m+ engagements on social
- #useyourvoice trended on twitter.com
- 218k young people registered to vote during campaign
- Approx 54% of all 18-24 year olds voted on June 8, 2017*
*source: Ipsos MORI