New research, which included a “first-of-its-kind survey”, reveals six “key findings about the state of British culture – and what this could mean for those of us working to change culture nationwide.” The findings in brief are: “1. Individualism is our default – but not when we get issue-specific; 2. Precarity is seen as our new normal – and people support bold action on extreme wealth; 3. More of us believe the economy is rigged; 4. We see health as a national resource; 5. Politicians are seen as ‘not like us’; 6. Some mindsets cluster together, with major implications for social change work.” The final finding suggests that coordinated effort by actors working on different issues to move one “lynchpin mindset” can maximise collective impact with a “positive spillover effect.”

As the rapid rise of Reform prompts urgency and alarm, Taylor feels “something deeper and more uncomfortable is also being asked of us: to invest in the quieter work that surfaces both our nation’s ghosts and our neglected traditions of care, so as to tend to the soil that keeps growing Farages.” Over four articles, she reflects on the fragility of the English identity: “not bedrock but wet clay”, a “quagmire of histories and deep narratives” that is “shaped and reshaped by the stories we allow ourselves to tell.” We are encouraged to imagine and pursue projects, processes, places and practices – an effective “accumulation of small, messy, unglamorous acts” – that face into three paradoxes: “seeding liberatory futures, while refusing to ignore the rot…addressing today’s hardships, while facing modernity’s lies… and tending belonging, while unapologetically naming harm.” She hopes for an Englishness “truer, humbler and more entangled with the land and the people who call this place home.” Also see Parts 2, 3, 4

“Make no missteps with the title of this piece — we need more than ‘talking to white people’ or a redirecting of programmes to focus on the ‘left behind white communities.’ Through these niceties and arbitrary binaries, we risk maintaining a perpetual reversal; a sustained paradigm of haves and have-nots; a de-equilibrium that temporarily benefits a few but continually favours extractive power. To really contend with radical grievance is to orient with a politicised analysis of liberation. We are talking a rigorous, astute, multifaceted, systemic, (infra)structural, intersectional framing of liberation that grasps at the root of dispossession and class… This is not about saving poor white people. It is about refusing to let fascism monopolise their grief. It is about refusing to cede the terrain of belonging, ritual and story to the far right… To insist that the longing for belonging, the ache of loss, can be transformed into radical grievance.”

Having previously reflected on “the core norms” that people share: “a belief in democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, and the fundamental right of all people to belong,” and what we need to share more of: “being open to working in new coalitions, sharing risk and learning, and embracing courage and complexity,” Powell outlines the fight for a collective story about “who we believe we are and who we want to become.” Recognising that “what we believe is what we create” (seeing isn’t believing), he calls for a “We The People” story that “rejects inevitability-thinking, and acknowledges the possibility of change,” and that makes room for fear, “while also employing collective courage as a practice and strategy.” This is a public, out-loud endeavour: “collective meaning-making, deeper collaboration, and gathering together are all vital antidotes in a time of crisis and division.⁠⁠”

“Dominant stories do not triumph because they are more persuasive or imaginative, but because they have the infrastructures that allow them to be diffused, repeated, and naturalised… The key question is not only what we say, but who can say it, where, and with what resources… The great emancipatory narratives (feminisms, trade unionism, anti-fascism, anti-colonialism) were not born as communication strategies but as material practices of solidarity, organisation, and conflict… Language can be a tool of liberation, but only when it is backed by material power: by institutions, by resources, by spaces and media that are not dependent on capital… Perhaps the task is not to ‘change the narrative,’ but to reorganise the collective power capable of changing reality itself.” There is no ‘narrative game’ without ‘the ground game’.

“After the first Global Tipping Points Conference in 2022, the University of Exeter’s Green Futures Network ran a series of workshops to explore the potential and enthusiasm for applying the growing research into Positive Tipping Points in practice to different contexts, including economics, food systems, activism, climate justice, and business. The response was clear: the idea of positive tipping points has huge potential for helping those working on systems change to better understand how complex systems can change, and how we can shift our thinking to work towards non-linear change… Following these workshops, the Green Futures Network began a slow and intentional process of co-creating an open source Toolkit that could make the ongoing research accessible to a wider community of people already working on meaningful and long-term systems change.”

An encouragement to recognise that systems are “dynamic and relational”, and the truth in Donella Meadows’ insistence that “we can’t impose our will on a system”. As such, “impact isn’t always immediate, and meaning often takes time to surface,” because “impact isn’t linear – it radiates, overlaps, collides; feedback matters – as ripples encounter edges, they return, reshape, or amplify; scale doesn’t always equal significance – even small drops can change the pattern if they land in the right place; and context shapes movement – what lies beneath the surface (culture, trauma, history, relationships) can alter how far and fast impact travels.” Which means recognising that “sometimes, our work is not about causing the biggest splash. It’s about creating the conditions for the right kind of ripple – one that is generative, sustaining, and in harmony with the broader system.”

A review of the Cascade Institute's Polycrisis Core Model Technical Synopsis prompts an uncomfortable question: “are you preparing for collapse, resisting decline, or building alternatives?” The answer, “we need all three: resilience, resistance, and renewal,” with the insight that across the 10,000 possible ‘Hope attractor’ scenarios (0.25% of all possibilities*) “strong democracy” is a cross-cutting feature. This demands “a critical mass of mature, engaged citizens” equipped with “complexity consciousness” and “long-term, relational, ecological and principled perspectives.” All of which requires a shift in our “how we belong to and are in relationship with the world.” Norris calls this ‘worldview:’ something which “unfolds through the living relationship between the inner and outer arcs of our experience.” As such, shifting worldviews “becomes less reformation and more remembering. Not so much building new mental structures but dissolving back into the aliveness that predates all our stories about it.” *yes, it’s a lot like that scene in Avengers: Endgame

The latest update to the ‘seven segments’ of the British population, charting where they’re at across a set of ‘drivers’, ‘fault lines’, their views on Immigration, Economics, and Climate, Politics, and the media they consume. The well-known segments receive a fresh taxonomy and distribution, as the political picture evolves, offering “a look upstream not just at what different groups think, but why they think it.” The four ‘drivers’ are “A crisis of trust; Exhaustion and struggle; Rising threat perception and a Loss of agency”. The ‘fault lines’ that help explain the division in Britain: “Appetite for change and risk; Simple or complex solutions; Individual agency; Conspiratorial thinking and ‘finding my own truth’; Multiculturalism and identity; Social disconnection; Attitudes towards free speech; The importance of identity.” There is also a webinar.

Following on from part 1, we learn of the two key factors driving support for Reform: voters are “more likely than not to think the country is getting worse, and more likely than not to feel disrespected.” Just 3 in 10 Reform voters say they feel respected, and 95% of Reform UK supporters believe Britain is in decline – which is “significantly out of step with the broader public”. 92% believe that “politicians don’t listen to people like me” and overall “tend to express economically populist sentiments, broadly agreeing that the economy is structured in a way that doesn’t benefit ordinary people,” with 74% “thinking big businesses take advantage of ordinary people” and 78% saying “rich people are able to get around the law more easily” – which explains why Reform are “positioning themselves as the party of domestic ‘family capital’, rather than national and international capital”.

Echoing a finding above, new research suggests that “by far the most impactful” message, when attempting to persuade Reform voters away from Reform, was a ‘corporate interests’ message “highlighting the money that Reform has taken from different interest groups, oil and gas especially, to question Farage’s motivations.” This message “pushed down not just on favourability to Farage, it was the only message to significantly reduce willingness to vote for Reform. It decreased Farage’s numbers as best PM, increasing Starmer’s lead over him in the two-way version of this question.” Overall we are reminded that “Reform is strong when the conflicts in British politics are cultural. They are potentially weaker, and Labour stronger, when the conflicts are economic.” The recommendation? Go “centre on culture (safe and unspectacular), and left on economics…actively seeking conflict and attention on the latter to raise its salience – especially as it relates to voters’ cost of living concerns.”

Curtis weaves his trademark tapestry of image, sound and logic to portray a story of power in the UK, proposing a explanation of our recent political history. We explore how an “underlying pessimism about human motives”, along with a mistaken belief in the possibility of control, led Thatcher’s government and its descendants to gradually give away their power. We see this happen through often ludicrous spin and deception, the financialisation of capitalism, and the privatisation of public goods and services (a process we learn was invented, or at least expanded by the Nazis). Major events are set against a backdrop of how the population was feeling, to provide an unsettling, revealing, infuriating and always entertaining perspective on the making of this moment, and a stark observation about the nature of power today. The ending provides an honest reflection on the role of work like this in these times.