The CLARINET Award has been an extraordinary hive of ideas, bringing together 53 eligible communication campaigns led by, or on behalf of, public authorities which offer a positive storytelling of migration. This Positive Storytelling Kit on Migration for Local Authorities takes you on a tour of these various campaigns, many of them highly innovative and inspiring. Its aim is to bring together the best practices, practical tips and concrete examples for public administrations to refer to when looking to launch their own campaigns.
As hate speech against migrants is becoming increasingly prevalent in the public sphere, it is fundamentally important to provide efficient tools to the actors who stand on the frontline of the debate on migration in order to empower them to reach out to European citizens, local authorities, and in particular those located in border areas where the presence of newcomers has a particular impact on the local demography. More generally, this toolkit is aimed at all stakeholders, whether public or private, who wish to tell a different story of migration by going beyond the notions of invasion and threat, to focus instead on sentiments of empathy and curiosity.
The heart of the Kit is the section How to run a campaign, which is divided into four main sections which allow for a broad exploration of the most interesting features of successful communication campaigns on migration. First, we analyse some General Principles, elements common to all the campaigns which are relevant regardless of the media platform on which the campaign is developed. We then focus on each CLARINET Award category individually and study some specifics that must be kept in mind when developing campaigns on web and social media, traditional media platforms and at public events.
In each of these sections you will find references to other projects and tools, practical tips and the links to the campaigns submitted to the CLARINET Award which provide successful examples and can inspire you when creating your own campaign.
Here you will also get the chance to browse through the multimedia products created by the campaigns, from songs to animated videos, short films to documentaries.
The toolkit also features an afterword by Totò Martello, Mayor of Lampedusa and Linosa, and a Bibliography, to delve into the theoretical framework of this tool.
About public-private partnership
While this toolkit deals with public communication campaigns and is directly aimed at local authorities, some may have already noticed that many campaigns participating in the CLARINET Award were principally run by private bodies either in partnership with, or on behalf of, municipalities or local governments. When talking about the highly politicised topic of migration, local authorities, with their mandate to deal with issues affecting the communities that they represent, have greater weight when addressing citizens and are better placed to convey a message to the public than civil society associations. Moreover, “being closer to citizens than other public institutions, local authorities are responsible for mobilising local societies’ opinions while acting as catalysts for change”, (“Empowering Local Authorities in partner countries for enhanced governance and more effective development outcomes”, DEVCO 2013).
However, many local authorities, especially small ones, lack the resources in terms of human resources, time, money and competences to take on a challenging process like a complex communication campaign. We have found that in many cases collaboration between local authorities and civil society organisations (associations, NGOs, social cooperatives, etc.) can be a winning strategy in developing and implementing innovative public communication campaigns that are capable of reaching out to citizens.
