The Wardman Wire

One of my interests (and aims of my blog) is to encourage participation in politics as widely as possible. At least two of the three main parties have been talking about training, including media training, for younger members. The Liberal Democrats are talking about why their Leadership Academy should train everyone as they are all potential leaders.

Meanwhile, the Young Britons’ Foundation ran a training day at the Conservative Party Conference for young activists. Mike Rouse has kindly written an account for the Wardman Wire, which I have also crossposted to the Thunderdragon’s blog.

Conservative Conference Activists’ Training Day

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham recently the youth wing of the Conservatives teamed up with The Young Britons’ Foundation to provide activists with the opportunity to learn some media handling skills. There were around 100 attendees, including Torybear.

Vox Pop

This course taught how to handle being “vox popped” and how best to convey a message through a medium like TV.

Experience

The morning started with some presentations and sharing of experiences. Donal Blaney, from the Foundation, shared a particularly amusing tale of an appearance he made once where he discovered via his father who was watching that he had developed a hole in his shoe. From the basics of appearance to handling tough questions the course offered it all.

Attitude

There’s a thirst within Conservative Future for training and skills development. Many young people join the organisation without any previous experience of politics or the media and will have previously had to learn from experience or guidance by peers. This course enables everybody to be prepared for the cameras, the journalists and understand how to shape their communication for their audience. There’s no voodoo or dark arts, just simple training and advice that seems to really work wonders. The activists at conference started nervous but left confident.

Practical

The practical workshop came in the form of pretend “vox pops” where each delegate appeared in front of a camera and was asked a few quetsions: about the conference, about policies or about a made-up event. It’s a tough slog going through everybody that attended, so much so that all that camera handling and movement I was responsible for caused me to pull something in my foot causing days of agony.

Wrapping Up

It was worth it though, because Conservative Future now has a large group of people with much more savvy media skills out there.