Creative Brief: Birmingham Economic Justice Alliance Branding and Communications

24 July 2024

Introduction:

The Economic Justice Alliance (EJA) is a catalyst for realising economic justice in Birmingham. Formed of campaigners, community groups, civil society organisations, and communities impacted by economic injustice, the Alliance supports shared visioning and analysis while celebrating and bolstering the diverse strategies, actions, and tactics we need to win real change.

Birmingham’s economy touches its citizens’ lives in dozens of ways each day. From access to safe, affordable housing, nourishing food, to good jobs, sustainable healthcare and other public infrastructures, economic change is possible on many fronts. It needs to transform to meet the needs of Birmingham’s communities – and we need strong relationships and a shared vision of the future to meet the scale of the challenge ahead of us. By working, imagining, strategising, and acting together, we’re accelerating the pace of economic change in Birmingham.

The EJA is a growing and evolving ecosystem of groups connected by a shared commitment to economic justice. While the groups and participants vary in size, focus area, and strategies, we come together to support a shared vision to improve the lives of people in Birmingham.

The Alliance has recently developed a communications strategy and following on from this it will be launching a new website and other external communications. Ahead of this it is commissioning a creative design project to develop its brand identity and create supporting assets.

Objective:

Develop the creative tools to enable the communication and implementation of the EJA’s strategy in Birmingham.

Create a distinctive brand identity with supporting assets, gaining audience understanding of the mission and theory of change and attracting their engagement.

What is a key thing our audience(s) will believe after seeing this work?

The Economic Justice Alliance gives us a place to build the skills, relationships, and strategies we need to make Birmingham a better, fairer place to live.

Scope of work

We are looking for a branding and communications agency or individual designer that can take a broad and collaborative approach to the project. This involves working with key players at the Barrow Cadbury Trust, People’s Economy (the Alliance’s appointed communications partner) and the Alliance’s steering group to develop a suite of brand and communications assets including:

• Creative brand assets such as a logo, fonts, colour palette, social media branding, creative brand templates (including newsletter assets, documents and powerpoints), website architecture and wireframes, brand guidelines guidelines, illustration, digital assets and iconography.

We have already developed a communications strategy including defined audiences, audience value propositions, tone of voice and a storytelling model that will support this work and be provided to whoever is appointed upon project initiation.

Applications

We welcome applications from freelance designers and brand and communication agencies, ideally based in or with a strong, demonstrable connection to Birmingham and communities experiencing economic injustice. We are looking for applications from people or organisations with experience and track record of working within social impact and social movement contexts.

Timeline

The deadline for expressions of interest is 11:59pm Sunday 18th August.

We will shortlist 3-5 expressions of interest to take forward and reach out to request any further details we require and schedule an interview on w/c 26th August. A decision will be made shortly after with the intention for work to begin in early September.

Submitting a proposal

We are looking for proposals from agencies or individuals explaining:

• Why you are well-placed to carry out the work
• A description of how you would approach the project, including approaches to consulting relevant stakeholders and the number of feedback rounds
• A description of key deliverables that would be provided upon completion (see ‘Scope of Work’ for what we would like to see delivered)
• The resources you have to give to the project (ie staff or freelancers)
• Details about the staff or freelancers on the project including your links to Birmingham and/or communities experiencing economic injustice
• What you need from the Alliance and relevant stakeholders to complete the project
• Timescales – i.e. how soon you could carry out the work if a tender was awarded
• Links to and/or details of relevant recent examples of other similar work you have carried out, in particular in social impact and social movements contexts
• Details of any experience and relevant skills in designing for accessibility
• A detailed quote for the work you propose to carry out

The deadline for expressions of interest is 11:59pm Sunday 18th August. Email to Fatima Iftikhar [email protected].

Budget

 £10,000 (inclusive of VAT)

The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition (CIFC) has today launched its revised Statement of Purpose (SoP).

The SoP will tell the next government that the Coalition is renewing its commitment to working in partnership with many of our funded partners and other kindred organisations and funders “to realise a world where women experience justice, fairness, safety, and equitable treatment within a justice system which values their rights and needs”.

 The focus of this collaboration has been expanded to include all stages in which women are in contact with or at risk of contact with the justice system, including early intervention work. The Coalition is also exploring whether prevention work with girls should be a focus to enable it to realise the recommendations set out by Baroness Corston in her seminal report in 2007, which advocated for ‘a radical new approach, treating women both holistically and individually – a woman-centred approach’.  

The coalition is currently ten full members and four supportive funders, including Barrow Cadbury, who are friends of the CIFC, and its next steps are to build working groups and pilot projects to deliver on its four objectives which are: 

1. Adoption of good practice grant making approaches and techniques bysharing learning and advocating for women within its own Trusts and Foundations and funder networks. 
2. Identifying and implementing good and promising practice, sharing key learning with practitioners, funders, and decision makers.
3. Identifying emerging issues facing women in the criminal justice system and the organisations that support them and leveraging the heft, legacy, and expertise of the Coalition to work with and alongside those partners to secure improvements to local and national legislation, policy, and practice.
4. Mobilising its own resources to deliver a robust and vibrant funding model and, where possible, advocating for a similar approach from statutory funders so that women’s centres and specialist organisations and services have the funds needed to deliver vital services.

There will be a test and learn phase until at least the end of this year to understand where and how the most impact can be made in this new phase of the Coalition’s life. Watch this space!

As a member of the Corston Independent Funders Coalition (CIFC) and a long-time advocate of progressive criminal justice policies for women, Barrow Cadbury Trust welcomes the announcement that the Government has paused its plans, announced by the Ministry of Justice in January 2021, to build 500 women’s prison places.  

Those 500 new prison places in existing prisons were estimated to cost £150 million – pulling funding away from badly needed and proven community approaches.  These cuts appear to be driven by the Government pulling in its belt rather than acknowledging what campaigners have long argued – that community-based interventions have better outcomes for women and their families.   

In Feb 2023 Barrow Cadbury Trust asked Doctor Kate Paradine to comment on the Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan.  She expressed disappointment that it had taken 5 years to put together a delivery plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on Women’s Offending, despite prompts in January 2022 from a National Audit Office report criticising “disappointing” progress in implementing the strategy, and in April 2022 a Public Accounts Committee report calling for the Ministry of Justice to get a grip on delivery with a clear plan, funding and measures of progress. 

Despite so many setbacks and delays there is still collective energy and commitment from campaigners to push for implementation of the MoJ’s Female Offender Strategy.  In line with Baroness Corston’s vision set out in the Corston Report from 2007, the CIFC seeks to enable systemic change in how women experience the justice system supporting women-centred, holistic, and trauma-responsive approaches to divert them away from crime. Chloe Geoghegan, Chair of CIFC said:  

“The recent announcement that plans to build 500 new women’s prison places have been paused is much welcomed. The new prison places always flew in the face of the Government’s own Female Offender Strategy, which sought to reduce the number of women in contact with the justice system and increase the number of women managed in the community. 

If the Government is serious about its commitments, the £150 million earmarked for these prison places urgently needs to be reallocated to community services engaged in prevention, early intervention, and rehabilitation work with women. Central to these objectives are  continued, increased, and long-term commitments to funding women’s centres, a vital lifeline for women facing multiple disadvantages. 

The women who access these centres have experienced extreme trauma, deprivation, and social exclusion and are all too often, unjustly, swept into the revolving door of criminalisation as a result. With this £150 million, the Government has a unique opportunity to secure the long-term sustainability of services that interrupt cycles of harm and crime and, in doing so, could leave a legacy of helping to transform the lives and futures of thousands of women and their families.” 

The announcement gave no indication that the money earmarked would be spent on women in the community and we fear that, if not clawed back, it will be used to expand the male prison estate.  But the Trust working with CIFC will keep up the pressure to ensure the needs of women in contact with the criminal justice system do not continue to take a back seat in spending and policy priorities. 

Laurie Hunte, Criminal Justice Programme Manager 

Fair By Design’s latest lived experience film highlights this injustice through three stories looking at energy, car insurance and access to cash. These stories show that people in poverty are charged more for essentials because of the way they pay for them.  

The film builds on work on the poverty premium in payments, and how people in poverty can access fair and flexible methods of payment. You can read a full paper on the issue here. 

Immigration and the election

When we do finally go to the polls later this year, will this be an ‘immigration election’ asks the report? Only for a minority. Around half of Conservatives (53%) say the issue is important in deciding how they will vote in the coming election, but it still comes after after the NHS (57%) and cost of living (55%) as their third most important issue. For Labour voters immigration ranks 12th in importance, with half as many saying it matters in deciding their vote (27%).

A numbers game?

In a period of high net migration, the new tracker survey finds that 52% of the public now supports reducing immigration (up from 48% in 2023). Four in ten people do not want reductions: 23% would prefer numbers to stay the same and 17% would like them to increase. Support for reducing immigration is still significantly lower than in 2015, the first year of the tracker, when 67% of the public backed reductions.

Attitudes differ significantly by politics. Seven in ten Conservative supporters (72%) want immigration numbers reduced. But most Labour supporters don’t, preferring immigration numbers to either remain the same (32%) or increase (20%), while 40% want reductions.

However, even those who want lower numbers find it difficult to identify what migration they would cut. Almost half of the 337,240 work visas granted in 2023 were ‘Skilled Worker – Health and Care’ visas. The tracker finds that 51% of the public would like the number of doctors coming to the UK from overseas to increase (24% remain the same, 15% decrease); 52% would like the number of migrant nurses to increase (23% remain the same, 15% decrease) and 42% would like more people coming to the UK from overseas to work in care homes (27% remain the same, 18% decrease).

For a range of other working roles, support for not reducing immigration numbers is higher than that for reducing them. Less than 3 in 10 people support reducing numbers of seasonal fruit and vegetable pickers, construction labourers, restaurant & catering staff, teachers, academics, computer experts and lorry drivers coming to the UK. When allocating work visas for immigration, the public would prefer the government to prioritise migration to address shortages at all skill levels (52%) than attracting people for highly skilled roles (26%).

Support for reducing the number of international students coming to the UK has increased by 4 points, with around a third of people (35%) preferring numbers to be reduced. But most of the public (53%) does not want to reduce student numbers. A third would prefer numbers to remain the same (34%) and a further fifth (19%) would like to see them increase.

The politics of immigration

As the UK heads towards a General Election, the tracker finds that the Labour Party is more trusted than the Conservatives to have ‘the right immigration policies overall’. Reform UK is slightly more trusted than the Conservatives but less trusted than Labour. Some 22% of the public says they trust the Conservative Party to have ‘the right immigration policies overall’, while 68% say they don’t trust the party. For Labour, 33% trust the party while 51% say they don’t. And 26% of the public says they trust the Reform UK Party on immigration, while 47% say they don’t – a similar score to the Lib Dems (trust 23%, distrust 50%).

Among leading politicians tested, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had the highest ‘distrust’ score, with 70% of the public saying they do not trust the PM on immigration and 21% saying they do. Some 57% say they distrust Labour leader Keir Starmer on immigration, with 31% saying they trust him. Nigel Farage is distrusted by 59% of the public on immigration and trusted by 29% – making him slightly more trusted than former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who is distrusted by 63% and trusted by 22% of the public.

Refugees, asylum and Rwanda

On asylum, the tracker finds that 47% of the public supports the Rwanda scheme and 29% are opposed to it. Opinion is divided by politics, with 75% support among Conservatives (and 10% opposition) compared to 31% support among Labour supporters and 47% opposition.

Only 32% of the public thinks the Rwanda scheme is likely to reduce the number of people trying to enter the UK without permission to seek asylum, while 56% think it is unlikely to do so.

Because the Rwanda scheme has often been mis-described, for instance as an offshoring scheme, the tracker tested which of three versions of the Rwanda policy people prefer:

• 32% chose the description of the government’s actual Rwanda scheme: “Remove asylum seekers to Rwanda to claim asylum there, without first assessing the claim.”
• 25% preferred a different version of the Rwanda scheme to the one that the government is pursuing: “Assess these asylum claims in the UK first, to only consider removals to Rwanda for those whose asylum claims fail”.
• 26% chose “Do not send anyone to Rwanda, regardless of how they arrived.”
• 5% chose “none of these” and 12% “don’t know”.

Overall, more people still think immigration has a positive impact on Britain (40%) than a negative impact (35%) though positivity has fallen slightly, by 3 points, since the last tracker in 2023 and from its March 2020 peak of 48%.

Ipsos interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 adults online aged 18+ across Great Britain between 17-28 February 2024. Data are weighted to reflect the population profile. All polls are subject to a range of potential sources of error.

Download and read the full report here

The report has found continuing improvement in the sector, with more organisations scoring high scores across the board and fewer recording the lowest marks. Giving Evidence – the researchers who compiled the report, gave a hundred foundations ratings from A to D on each one’s diversity, accountability and transparency, with eleven scoring A overall (up from seven in 2022).

Conversely, fourteen foundations were rated D overall with nine being given the bottom rating in all three categories, compared with twenty-three and seventeen in the previous year.

Diversity was the domain where performance was weakest although, again, significant improvements have been made in the past twelve months.

The FPR was initiated in 2021 by Friends Provident Foundation, and is funded by a group of thirteen UK grant-making foundations. The ‘Funders Group ’this year were: Friends Provident Foundation; Barrow Cadbury Trust; The Blagrave Trust; Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; John Ellerman Foundation; Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust; Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust; Lankelly Chase Foundation; Paul Hamlyn Foundation; Power to Change; The Indigo Trust; City Bridge Foundation; and John Lyon’s Charity.

In response to the FPR, emerged a campaign called The Three Commitments which encourages grant-making trusts and foundations to enhance their practices in the important key areas of diversity, accountability, and transparency.

The Three Commitments campaign enables foundations to lead by example and inspire positive change within the grant-making sector by committing to three changes they would like to make.

Arvinda Gohil OBE, chair of the Future Economy Alliance, commented: “Millions of us across the UK work in mission-led organisations that show the way to a stronger, fairer, greener economy. We just need those in power to unleash the full potential of our movement, so that this way of working becomes the national norm. With government and business working in partnership, we can build an economy where all of society profits.”

Lord Victor Adebowale CBE added: “It’s exciting to see champions of change coming together from all business sectors across the UK, united in the work to fix our economy. As a mission-led entrepreneur myself, I hope this message will ring loud and clear in the halls of Westminster: Business as usual isn’t working; we need a new business plan for Britain.”

The CIFC believes that all women should have access to justice in the criminal justice system – women already involved in the system as well as those at risk – and that women’s specific needs must be met:

• at each point of contact with the criminal justice system, as opposed to being shoe-horned into a system that does not account for their specific gendered needs
• through trauma responsive ways of working which address the underlying vulnerabilities and disadvantages that the vast majority of women in the criminal justice system experience, as
  well as nurturing their strengths.

In line with Baroness Corston’s vision set out in the Corston Report, the CIFC seeks to enable systemic change in how women experience the justice system including through supporting women-centred, holistic, and trauma-responsive approaches to divert them away from crime. Much of the way the member organisations fund, and work more widely, therefore is shaped by systems thinking. The group understands that the issues it is seeking to address are complex, that causes and consequences are interconnected, and that the power to create change is spread across the system. This work therefore requires partnering, collaboration and co-production with all actors, particularly those with lived experience of the criminal justice system, to find solutions that will alter the underlying structures and supporting mechanisms which make the system operate in a particular way. And it is this commitment and approach that it brings to the table.

The CIFC is a diverse group of funders with different charitable objectives, interests, and institutional frameworks. Opportunities for members to engage are structured around the three ways in which the Coalition seeks to make a difference – networking and sharing information and learning about policy, practice and grant-making, collaborative funding, and influencing policy and practice.

Ofgem also said it had not made a final decision on the extra costs for people who pay for energy when they receive their bill. It plans to continue to explore how to tackle this issue and will publish a consultation by the end of the year. If implemented, a reduction or end to this extra cost would happen from April 2025.

Maria Booker, Head of Policy, Fair By Design, said:

“This is a big win for people on low incomes. Today’s announcement introduces a lasting solution. We welcome recognition from the regulator that people on low incomes should not pay more for their energy.

“We also welcome Ofgem’s intention to bring down the premium for paying on receipt of bill, even if not as soon as we had hoped.

“But the extra cost for those who pay when they receive their bill still exists. We want to see this completely eliminated and will continue to push hard for this change to happen.”

Read the full release on Fair By Design’s website.