Text reads 'Movement Learning Catalyst: A Guide to Learning for Systemic Change'. Image is of a woman holding a banner, a loudhailer and her dress is pulled down below her chest. She is in front of a purple cirle with scribbles. Out of the circle are 5 hands in different formations. One is held in a fist, one is in a peace sign.

Movement Learning Catalyst: A Guide to Learning for Systemic Change

By , , , ,

Introduction

The Movement Learning Catalyst offers a guide to learning for systemic change. It aims to support experienced activists and organisers by strengthening their ability to collaborate, strategize and learn from each other’s struggles. It offers new ways of thinking, tools, and practices to enhance strategising and movement building.

The Movement Learning Catalyst Learners Guide is a collection of curricula and learning resources to empower movement learning for systemic change.

In the Guide you will find:

  • Content to question our assumptions about how change works, and expand our thinking of strategies in new ways that take into account the diversity of strategic approaches and the responsiveness to the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
  • Resources to explore the dynamic interplay between local and global struggles and how to organize transnationally and trans locally in the broader fabric of resistance.
  • Tools to reflect and learn from our experience in movements, draw on popular education to create spaces for learning and knowledge production in movements.

At the heart of this guide is an understanding that the diverse range of social movements are to be understood as an ecology of social movements with different interconnected actors across issues, strategies, geographical, cultural, and ideological boundaries.

Watch Introductory Video

Who is this Guide for?

The Movement Learning Catalyst (MLC) is designed for experienced activists and organisers deeply embedded in social movements, seeking reflection and development of their practice to enhance their effectiveness in effecting systemic change.

This guide targets individuals actively involved in organisations, networks, or movements, keen on evaluating their roles within the broader landscape of social movements and strategizing ways to amplify their impact.

We envision the guide’s users as practitioners who have already honed the practical skills needed for activism through active engagement in their groups and organisations, whether in direct action, campaigning, organising, or social media advocacy. While the guide is specifically crafted for movements and contexts across Europe, its principles and insights are applicable beyond the European sphere, offering relevance to diverse global contexts.

The Guide is composed of 4 distinct and complementary parts, each part could be considered as a standalone curriculum or in combination with other parts to support your learning and design contextualised pathways through the curricula.

Each module has learning activities, learning resources and references which can be used to put the curriculum in practice. There are:

  • 50+ Learning Resources

Screenshot of the website https://movementlearning.org/resources/ Title reads 'Resources'. Movement Learning Catalyst logo in top left.

Screenshot of a word document page. Title reads 'MLC Part 1. Transversal Organizing and the Ecology of Social Movements Module 2: Movement Timelines, Learning activity Movement Timelines'. There is text and the logo for the Movement Learning Catalyst at top right.

Access Guide

4 Parts

Part 1 – Transversal Organizing and the Ecology of Social Movements

This part discusses the importance of building powerful alliances within the “ecology of social movements” to address global challenges such as the rise of authoritarianism, climate collapse, and increasing inequality. It emphasizes the strength in diversity and the need for transversal organizing across various social and organizational differences.

Module 1 – Mapping Ecologies of Social Movements

This module explores the complex network and diversity within social movements, emphasizing the importance of understanding and navigating the varying actors, roles, and strategies to foster resilience and transformative power. It introduces the concept of an ecology of movements, which focuses on the interconnectedness and diversity within social movements, highlighting both collaborative and antagonistic relationships.

Through movement mapping activities, participants are guided to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of movements, fostering strategic thinking for effective movement building.

Module 2 – Movement Timelines

Transversal organising requires that people develop skills and find the motivation to take on the challenges of working with people in organisations and movements who might sit outside their usual sphere of engagement. An important source of motivation and learning are the historical precedents in our movements.

This module encourages participants to carry out some research into the history of a social movement with which they feel some connection and to explore how power has been built and used. They will learn to identify patterns and to derive learning from the successes and failures of historical precursors and their own previous actions.

Module 3 – Historial Alliances

Most system-transforming change has come about not from a single movement operating in isolation but from an alliance between different movements and communities in struggle.

This is far easier said than done – but learning about the longer history of powerful alliances is an important starting point for thinking about what might be possible today.

Module 4 – Working with Diverse Transformative Strategies

This module addresses the fragmentation and antagonism within social movements, emphasizing the need to understand and appreciate diverse transformative strategies for change. It explores the concept of transversal organizing and encourages reflection on individual and collective attitudes towards different approaches, aiming to foster appreciation over polarization, recognize complementarity, and build effective cooperation.

Through examining historical strategies and encouraging a shift in perspective, the module seeks to enhance movement ecology by developing self-awareness, emotional literacy, and strategic engagement across political identities.

Module 5 – Working with Power and Inequalities in our Movements

This module addresses power dynamics and inequalities within movements. It emphasizes the need for skills and tools to work with these dynamics effectively, covering topics like identity formation, allyship, and the psychosocial aspects of activism.

The module stresses active solidarity over anti-oppression, aiming for a world free of oppression for mutual benefit. It introduces Nieto’s skillsets for addressing oppression and discusses mainstream and margin dynamics within social movements, aiming to equip activists with strategies for inclusive and strategic organising.

Module 6 – Making Alliances Across Issues and Struggles

This module emphasizes the necessity of forming deep and effective alliances across diverse movements and communities to combat authoritarianism, corporate power, and social injustices.

Recognizing the challenges of power differences and varied organizing methods, it encourages building strategic alliances that bridge gaps between issues and communities. The module aims to enhance understanding of social movement ecology, advocating for collaborative actions and solidarity among movements for a stronger, unified resistance against common adversaries.

Part 2 – Transnational and Translocal Organizing: Organising Across Borders

This part explores the concepts of transnationalism and translocalism, challenging learners to reimagine organizing beyond the nation-states. Emphasising global solidarity, it traces the heritage of social movements and confronts borders, advocating for collaborative efforts to dismantle globally interlocked systems of oppression.

Module 1 – Understanding  Transnationalism and Translocalism

This module explores transnationalism and translocalism, offering multiple perspectives including critical and decolonizing approaches. It discusses the importance of conceptualizing transnationalism not as confined within national borders but as an active engagement with global differences and bordering practices, aiming to build solidarity and challenge power dynamics and divisions created by state borders.

Module 2 – Transforming Transnational and Translocal Flows of Power

This module delves into transforming transnational and translocal flows of power, assessing global systems of power and how they can be challenged. It emphasizes understanding power dynamics to reclaim power for movements, exploring flows of people, capital, information, and more. It encourages strategizing to transform oppressive systems and build empowering alternatives.

Module 3 – Learning from Transnational and Translocal Activism and Organising

This module draws lessons from historical transnational and translocal activism, examining successful and failed movements to understand power building and coordination. It emphasizes the importance of solidarity, resilience, diversity, and process in transnational organizing.

Lessons from past movements offer insights for current and future transnational efforts to challenge oppression and build solidarity.

Module 4 – Radical Imaginations: Envisioning Futures Beyond Borders

This module focuses on employing radical imagination to envision futures beyond nation-states, emphasizing creative and radical imagination as key to transnational organizing.

It discusses the importance of imagining alternative social and political realities, fostering solidarity, and challenging existing power structures. Radical imagination is presented as a tool for transformative collective action.

Part 3 – Strategy and Movements

This part explores strategy and movements practices essential for navigating and influencing social movements effectively. From the foundational stones of strategy understanding, vision articulation, and contextual awareness, it builds up to dissect the intricate dynamics of power, the persistence of hegemony, and the guiding principles derived from the study of complex living systems.

Module 1- Strategy Cycle

This module presents the basic framework of the Strategy Cycle, a six stage process that represents a comprehensive and systematic approach to strategic thinking, planning, and action. It helps us to cover some of the basics of strategy work from the outset, and also provides the basic structure for the curriculum and modules to follow.

Module 2. Vision and Values

Strategies intend to influence current conditions to shape the future, in one way or another. If we understand strategy as a relatively coherent set of plans or approaches designed to achieve long-term results, it seems clear that the starting point for strategic thinking needs to be a sense of what our strategy is aimed towards. Vision helps us to establish that sense of direction and informs our clarity of purpose. Clarity of values helps to shape the way we’ll work together towards realising the large scale changes we want to see.

Module 3. Surveying the Lie of the Land: Overview and Movement Mapping

Before we act we need to survey the terrain of action. There is very little that we do in life where we alone determine the outcome of our actions. In almost every situation our actions come into relationship with other actions, intentions, and conditions that shape the impact of our efforts, blocking them, multiplying them, augmenting, or undermining them. This gives rise to all kinds of unintended outcomes and sometimes simply leads to failure. Although we shouldn’t give in to delusions of grandeur, assuming that if only we get our strategies right we can shape the future as we wish, we can definitely develop more informed and better judgments about how to act, where to invest energy and how to improve our timing.

To develop plans that are more relevant and well informed we need to take time to better understand the context and conditions with which our actions will interact. This is what we call surveying the lie of the land.

Module 4. Surveying the Lie of the Land: Context Analysis

In this module we look at the PESTLE Analysis tool and the framework of mechanisms of social reproduction. Together they form part of the external analysis we need to do to gain an overview of the different macro-environmental factors that we should be taking into account as we develop our strategic thinking. These tools and concepts can help us to better understand the socio/political factors that can influence future actions and help us to recognise potential risks, threats, and opportunities.

Module 5. Surveying the Lie of the Land: Hegemonic Power and How to Change the World

How is it that despite break-neck technological development, rapid cultural transformations, and dramatic political changes, so many things – fossil fuel capitalism, patriarchy, global race structures, economic inequality – stubbornly persist and even intensify? And what could bring about genuine change? The radical analysis of hegemony – the social alliances that underpin power in society – is key to answering both questions and to developing strategies for radical transformation. It can play a valuable role in surveying the lie of the land and analysing power in society.

Module 6. Surveying the Lie of the Land: Context and Complexity

In some of the following modules we’ll dive more deeply into ways that we can build into our strategic practice awareness and understanding related to complexity. But in this module we introduce a couple of tools that are specifically helpful in relation to context analysis work.

Scenario planning offers a simple framework for building pictures of various possible futures by cross-referencing key variables.

The second tool can help us to get under the surface of events and turn our attention towards patterns and underlying conditions that are more likely to have more enduring relevance over time. Both of them can help us to take account of the ever changing and unpredictable field as we survey the lie of the land.

Module 7. Theories of Change and Critical Pathways

With vision and values offering a sense of direction and informing our purpose, and having surveyed the lie of the land, we are now equipped to begin to look closely at the pathways that we believe will lead us towards the changes we want to see in the world.

This module encourages us to examine our assumptions about how change happens, resist magical thinking, and be attentive to the ways our actions can genuinely combine towards real impact and transformation.

We look at the distinction between overarching theories of transformation and the more granular theories of change that describe courses of action. Using the critical pathways tool, we develop good practices that ensure we are not simply repeating habitual tactics and that we are genuinely looking to ensure our efforts align with strategic ambition.

Module 8: Strategy and Complexity I

Social change is a multifaceted process shaped by intricate interactions and unpredictable dynamics that cannot be influenced through simplistic, linear, and conventional strategic approaches alone. In this module, we explore the intricacies of social change in a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). We will dive into key themes related to complexity with insights from the study of complex living systems theory. This will inspire critical reflections on how to take into account complexity to inform our approach to movement strategy, and on the skills and attitudes necessary for navigating complexity effectively.

Module 9: Strategy and Complexity II

Building upon the concepts introduced in the previous module, here we close the sub-curriculum by exploring a few key principles and their relevance for strategising in the context of social movements and ambitions to influence structural socio-political transformation.

Part 4 – Popular Education and Movement Learning

This part delves into the rich, layered processes of movement learning and popular education, emphasizing the transformative power of activist knowledge production and sharing. The series explores the history, principles, and practices of radical popular education, drawing heavily on Paulo Freire’s work to emphasize dialogue, critical reflection, and the political commitment to emancipation.

Module 1 – Digging Where You Stand: Exploring the Experiences of Activist Learning

In this module we wish to illustrate how building on, and from, experience can be approached and practically linked to the themes of learning and education. In support of this we outline how we understand learning, experience, and critical reflection. These comments in this module serve as framing arguments for all of the five modules in this part.

Module 2 – Movement Learning

This module outlines a number of key conceptual distinctions which are salient to understanding and planning social movement learning. We suggest there is a need to pay attention to movement learning as a phenomenon which operates on three interconnected “levels” – the biographical, the organisational, and the societal.

Research on movement learning indicates a great deal of movement learning is non-formal, incidental, and routine.

Bearing this in mind throughout the module, we invite participants to pause and think about the learning in their movements; the range and the richness of this learning and what works well and what might need to be enhanced or further developed.

Module 3 – Popular Education: History, Principles and Practices

This module focuses on popular education. It sketches out a brief history of radical and popular education including some areas of difference and debate and seeks to connect to the vitality of these long standing traditions. We focus primarily on the ideas and practices of Paulo Freire, as well as his collaborations with others. The learning activities in this module are designed so that participants familiarise themselves with this history and explore how popular education has been approached in diverse sites and movements and the impact this has had.

Module 4 – Dialogue and Research in Movement Learning and Education

Radical popular education is built around the belief in the importance of critical dialogue. Dialogue is viewed as the basis of cultural development, significant learning, and emancipatory education for communities and groups in struggle. In this module we will explore what is meant by dialogue in radical popular education, how this can be fostered pedagogically, and what a commitment to dialogue means for thinking about political activism.

Module 5 – Lost and Found: Harvesting, Recording and Disseminating Movement Learning

This module brings together several of the strands we have covered, and we begin by asking participants to reflect upon the materials and themes of the four preceding modules. They are asked to assess the salience of the learning as a whole for their current and future activism.

Notes on Pedagogy: An Educator’s Guide to using the Movement Catalyst Resources

The MLC educator’s guide aims to support educators to use and contextualise MLC learning resources to their group and organisations. It presents the pedagogical principles and practices for transformative learning of the MLC drawing from radical popular education, particularly Paulo Freire’s work.

Other Languages

The guide is also available in:

About Author

The Movement Learning Catalyst (MLC) is a movement building initiative created to address the key challenges movements in Europe face and their learning needs for more effective movement building, strategizing and learning required to achieve structural transformation. The Movement Learning Catalyst (MLC) was initiated as part of an international collaboration among different pan-European activist training and popular education networks: Ulex Project, European Alternatives (EA), European Community Organising Network (ECON), and activist researchers at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Explore Further

Share Resource

Share on LinkedIn

Topics:

Tags:

Format:

Language:


image Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA

Contact a Commons librarian if you would like to connect with the author

Topics