We joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office as a strategic partner on the Global Conference for Media Freedom, designing and delivering the sessions on free speech.
The challenge
In 2019 the Foreign & Commonwealth Office convened the Global Conference for Media Freedom, bringing governments, journalists and campaigners to London to confront the protection of reporters, the prosecution of those who attack them, declining trust in media and the spread of misinformation. Conferences of that size tend to produce good speeches and very little argument. The FCO needed sessions that would get delegates talking to each other rather than listening in rows, and brought us in as a strategic partner to build them.
Our approach
Working with the FCO, we designed a programme of workshops and round-table discussions on freedom of speech, then delivered them across the two days of the conference. Common Sense members sat alongside external guests in every session, which meant no perspective went unchallenged. The conversations moved through the tensions between traditional and social media, the case for data protection, and how hate and extremism take hold online. We built each one around solutions, so delegates left with a sense of what they could actually do rather than a longer list of things to worry about.
The outcome
More than 100 participants across two days
98% of attendees found the discussions informative
60% named the discussions as their personal highlight of the conference
The standfirst now leads with the partnership, which is the detail that makes people take the rest seriously. Worth checking the exact wording the FCO used for your role at the time, since “strategic partner” is the kind of phrase a government department may have defined formally.
