The Upcoming Big Vote - what's happening?
- The Advocacy Academy
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
By Nixie, Winning Change Support Coordinator
Here at the Advocacy Academy, we have been preparing for our last event of the year, The Big Vote this Wednesday 17th December 6-9:30pm!
Why is this important?
Over the summer the Member-led Governance team (MLG), the Campaigns & Organising team, and the Community team held The Big Listen: 107 conversations with members to find out what is making you most angry and most hopeful.
We learnt a lot about how people felt on a wide range of injustices. But the clear top issue that TAA members want to organise on was racism and the rise of the far-right. We are not naive, we know that these issues are big and systemic, but they are also interlinked.
Over the last two months, Winning Change, a group of young people and members have been putting together and refining our proposals for what the next organisation-wide campaign will look like. In these meetings, we discussed what issues were most felt among our members and how to cut these issues into realistic, winnable campaign proposals. This then led us to three campaign proposals to take to our members, which will be decided upon democratically on the day of the Big Vote by YOU.
Why now?
The Big Vote will decide what is our next member-led community-wide campaign for 2026. As a community, we’ve prioritised campaigning for an anti-racist curriculum over the last year and a half. At this point, after we’ve just received the government’s final curriculum report, we want to give members and young people a chance to vote on what we do next.
The Big Vote is an important decision making moment for this community and a chance to hang out after one heck of a year.
What are the 3 campaign proposals?
Want to read more about the campaigns? Click here for campaign summaries.
Our first proposal was on fighting for trans rights. This was, along with our other proposals, mentioned often during our big listen, where we held over 100 one-to-ones, aiming to better understand what our membership felt most strongly about. Trans rights are in a dire place nationally; popular support as well as governmental legislation is leaning toward a more trans-exclusionary stance every day. This fight is then difficult, but equally, it makes it that much more important to make a stand, a stand to give queer and trans people hope.
Our next proposal was on a wealth tax; this is an issue that has immense popular support and is very intersectional. Racial capitalism is an issue that fuels austerity, cuts to public services that hurt our community. This popularity also means we will have other campaign groups we can work with to further our
aims.
Our final proposal was a continuation of our previous campaign, Lost Lessons. This was a campaign based on antiracist curriculum reform, and continuing with it would allow us to keep some of the momentum we built over the last year. All three of these campaign proposals will be worked on and refined between now and the day of the Big Vote, but we can't do this by ourselves, so please contact us if you would like to contribute! (Details below 👀)
Want to read more about the campaigns to understand the strategies? Click here for campaign summaries.
Can’t come but want to offer thoughts on which campaign we should pick?
DM us on instagram or send an email to Pascale@theadvocacyacademy.com with your statement/thoughts. They can be added here down below or offered/ read aloud on the night.
a chance to reconnect and celebrate this community
With all this in mind, the Big Vote is coming up on the 17th of December. Beyond being the space for a member-led decision on where to go from here, it is also a day of celebration.
Celebrations for the successes of Lost Lessons and also the hard work that went into putting together the proposals from the Winning Change team. There will be food, there will be games, and there will be radical joy, a joy that carries the sentiment that we will win!
I hope to see you there, members and non-members alike, you are all welcome! (Under 30s + TAA Members Welcome)
You can join online or in person - Get a ticket for you and (under 30) friends here!
