Conservation Optimism Summit

Effective marketing is a vital tool for re-framing perceptions of conservation, spreading messages of positivity and hope, and for celebrating our successes. Join us to play a part in the new, positive communications movement. With experts from Ogilvy Change, the leading behavioural interventions agency, and PHD Worldwide, Media Network of the Year 2016, we'll explore the importance of positive messaging and how we can change the negative discourse, not only to change attitudes, but to change human behaviour.  The session will take the form of an interactive ‘speed marketing challenge’, bringing together inspirational conservationists and a team of expert marketing and behaviour-change professionals to share creative ideas and develop an industry-wide, positive communications campaign framework. No prior communications experience needed!  
 
Session chair: Rosie Hancock Pook, Communications professional and Conservation Science postgraduate student - Imperial College London 

Strategy leads:
Lindsey Harris - Marketing Insight Expert 

Pete Dyson, ‎Senior Behavioural Strategist - Ogilvy Change

Julia Stainforth, Choice Architect - Ogilvy Change

Richard Wright, ‎Strategy Director - PHD Worldwide

Lindsey Hoyle - Freelance Strategic Marketing Consultant 

 

Exploring changemaking, the need for pregressive conservation, and how to engage the public and stimulate social change for conservation issues.

This session will be part interactive discussion and part presentation.

There will be an open dialouge about Change making and conservation - and if there is a need for a paradigm shift within conservation to encorporate more progressive methods.

There will also be an overview of the work of UK conservation organisation Fin Fighters, and how this organisation has employed progressive conservation techniques and created change in a fast and effective way.

For too long, conservation organisations have relied on shock and emotional guilt tactics to communicate to the public why we need conservation. Negative language and imagery is used to convey species declining and habitats shrinking. Whilst these messages are important to highlight, they have become commonplace and dominant, resulting in people feeling disempowered to make a change. This session will look at how we can change this: how can we, as the conservation community, pass on our enthusiasm and scientific knowledge and best communicate our work to the wider public through storytelling? 

The session will focus on how to tell conservation stories in the best way possible to empower and inspire audiences, and attract new attention. Led by Durrell and Wildscreen, this session will bring together professionals from the world of film, media and marketing to look at the art of storytelling. Participants will be split into small workshop groups and will each be given a pre-determined story to communicate. Our professionals will then work with each group to advise participants how they, as a creative, would develop and tell these stories. The groups will then have a go at storyboarding their ideas – a skill which participants can then take back to their own organisations to help them turn their own stories into stories of hope suitable for film. Session participants will then come back together at the end to share their ideas and the professionals will then summarise the key points that have come out of the session with some final words of advice for participants.

The Global Footprint Network predicts that by 2020 we will be using the resources of 1.75 planets. To reduce our global footprint, we need to increase conservation far beyond protected areas. We need to encourage conservation in the areas where we live and work.

This session introduces the Verified Conservation Area (VCA) approach, a voluntary mechanism for recognizing area-based conservation. VCA offers communities, companies, and individuals the opportunity to be recognised for their conservation efforts through transparency, accountability, and verification.

The session will begin with an introduction to the VCA approach, followed by an overview of research on landowner motivations for conservation actions. It will conclude with two commentators and an open discussion.

Presenters

Francis Vorhies, Earthmind: Introduction to the VCA Approach

Jennifer Gooden, University of Oxford: Conservation Landowner Perspective

Commentators

Prue Addison, University of Oxford

Chris Naylor, A Rocha International

About the VCA approach

The VCA Approach aims to reduce our global footprint by encouraging voluntary conservation beyond legally protected areas. It is inclusive and enables communities, companies, individuals and local authorities to join a new social movement for conservation. All areas managed to conserve nature can be registered as VCAs.

Listing on the VCA Registry enables land-based conservation efforts to be visible and accountable to key stakeholders and to the broader public. Listing an area is guided by the VCA Standard and Toolkit, which are based on international best practice.

Over the next three years, the VCA partners will list 100 new VCAs covering six million hectares. Together, we will scale up a social movement for conservation by fostering a learning and sharing culture to conserve the areas where we live and work. More information is available at http://conserveareas.org/. 

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Room needs: Projector for presentations, AV for short video 

Through questioning the possibilities for arts-science collaborations, asking ourselves difficult questions and learning from the pitfalls as well as the successes, we hope to find tangible areas of common ground, opportunities for synergy and innovative methods for tackling conservation conflicts.
Limited seating.