Hello all!

It's been a busy few months at Social Change Lab, with new research launching across protest rights and climate, a brand new website, and a chance to join our team. Here's what we've been up to.

Come work with us: applications close this Sunday

We're hiring a Research & Outreach Officer and the deadline is fast approaching (this Sunday, 19 July). If you care about understanding what makes social movements effective and want to help turn rigorous research into real-world impact, we'd love to hear from you. Full details and how to apply are on our careers page. Please do share it with anyone you think might be a good fit.

A refreshed website

We've given our website a full refresh, with a new visual style and logo. Alongside the new look, we've made it easier to explore our growing library of reports and resources, and to learn about our history, our theory of change and the impact we've had. Whether you're new to our work or have followed us for years, there's a lot to dig into. Have a look.

Project Slingshot's campaign against factory farming is in full motion

Project Slingshot has launched its campaign to end factory farming, with the goal of making the practice politically toxic. The campaign's advertising across the London Underground has featured in more than 200 stations. So far it has drawn 135,000 website visitors, 26 million social media views, 460,000 new followers across platforms and 46,000 newsletter subscribers.

The first wave focused on the use of CO2 gas chambers to kill pigs. The second wave, now under way, turns to the over-breeding behind almost every chicken sold in the UK, the fast-growing birds campaigners have dubbed "Frankenchickens".

The campaign team needed a clear picture of public attitudes to factory farming. We conducted nationally representative polling of the UK and US publics, tracking views on common industry practices and on the animal agriculture sector. You can read more about that work here.

What can animal activists learn from Denmark's "pig election"?

Our Director of Research & Development, Cathy Rogers, has written a new blog on Denmark's so-called "pig election" and what it can teach animal advocates elsewhere. It looks at how animal welfare can move from the margins to the centre of political debate. Read it here.

New work on protest rights in the UK

With funding from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, we've launched a new strand of research on attitudes to protest rights in the UK and the impact of measures to clamp down on them. We've just finished collecting data for a survey examining how recent protest laws are affecting people's willingness to take part, and we'll be launching an online experiment later this month.

Watch this space: we're running an in-person workshop later in the year to share our findings and discuss what they mean for practice.

Where next for the climate movement?

In case you missed them, we've published two discussion papers exploring promising future directions for the climate movement.

The first asks whether climate adaptation could be the movement's missing mobiliser, co-authored with Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project. Read it here.

The second looks at data centres as a new frontier for the climate movement, co-authored with Philip Eubanks of the Climate Emergency Fund and Saul Levin of the Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research. Read it here.

A new resource on resisting data centres

On a related note, the excellent Commons Social Change Library has published a new resource, "How to Stop a Data Centre: Tools for Community Resistance". We were glad to see it draw on both our data centres discussion paper and our RCT on which AI harms and risks are most likely to mobilise the public to act. It's a practical guide for anyone organising around this fast-growing issue. Take a look.

Thank you

As always, we're grateful to our supporters, funders and partners who make this work possible. Your support means we can keep doing this vital work.

For more information, visit socialchangelab.org or contact us at info@socialchangelab.org. And please consider making a donation; it makes a real difference.

All the best,

Sam Nadel
Executive Director, Social Change Lab