26 Sep 2024
This winter, we’ll be making scarves and decorating them with messages from our communities to show our MPs why we need urgent action on warm homes. This activity builds on last year’s impactful community quilt tactic and uses craftivism to engage our communities, show the breadth of support for warm homes and get heartfelt messages about the energy crisis to our decision makers. At the end of the winter, we’ll bring all our scarves together in Westminster to demand the government commits to an urgent, ambitious and fair Warm Homes Plan.
How to make a campaign scarf
The important thing is decorating your scarves with messages and images to represent your local community. So, you could get crafty and knit, crochet or sew your own scarves if you’d like to. Or you could decorate old scarves, collecting them from your community or buying them from a charity shop. And it’s completely up to you how many scarves you make.
If you need to buy any bits and pieces to help make your scarves, you can apply to the United for Warm Homes Fund.
How to add messages to your scarves
Invite people to create a fabric or paper patch to attach to your scarves. They can add images representing how they feel about the energy crisis, handwritten messages sharing their experiences of cold homes or demands for action from the government.
Make your scarf activity accessible to everyone in your community by collecting messages online as well via email, social media or our Action Network template (send us an email and we can set you up on Action Network). You can then attach these messages to the scarves yourself.
We’ve got a limited number of craft kits available to help you make your patches. Get in touch if you’d like a kit. Otherwise, check out our instructions below.
As well as personal messages and drawings, invite your partners to create a patch with their name or logo. You might also want to include local data on the energy crisis (which you can find on our map) and your group's name. Use our template letters and numbers to help with this.
Engage your community
To make our scarves as impactful as possible, we need to show the breadth of support for our campaign. The best way to do this is by running community scarf-making sessions over the autumn and winter. You could run events in a local community space like a library, or invite people to make patches at a stall or workshop at local festivals and events. Think outside the box to try and reach new people in your community, especially those most impacted by the energy crisis. Find out more about how to run campaigning events and stalls.
Another great way to engage local people is by working with local partners. Ask to run a scarf-making session together, or share resources so they can run a session of their own. Find out more about building partnerships and local support.
Promote your scarf-making sessions to your mailing list, on social media (you can use our template posts) and by putting up posters in the local area. Invite your partners to do the same to reach as many people as possible. Remember to include a way for people to submit messages online too.
Once people have made a patch, you can give them a United for Warm Homes fabric patch in return to attach to their own scarf. This means they can show their support for the campaign throughout the winter and keep spreading the word. Order United for Warm Homes patches.
How to share your scarves with your MP
Involve your local MP by asking them for a meeting, inviting them to a scarf-making session or bringing your scarves to a local event they’re attending. You can use our template social media posts to get their attention. Find out more about how to engage your MP.
Share your community’s heartfelt messages and talk to them about our campaign demands. If your MP is supportive of the campaign, invite them to take a photo with local people wearing the scarves. Then ask them to continue championing the campaign by:
- Sharing the photo on their social media and expressing their support for warm homes.
- Wearing a United for Warm Homes patch on their own scarf.
- Submitting a parliamentary question related to the campaign. See our suggested questions.
Send out a press release to local media about the meeting with your MP and the commitments they’ve made to support your campaign. Make sure to include any photos. This will help you to hold your MP to what they’ve promised.
If your MP isn’t willing to meet, don’t worry. You can still get their attention by using your scarves in a photo stunt. Take a photo with lots of local people wrapped up in the scarves or attach your scarves to local landmarks to create an eye-catching image. Share these photos on social media and send out a press release explaining why you made the scarves and the lack of engagement from your MP. This will help put pressure on them and spread the word about the campaign locally.
Bringing our scarves together
At the end of the winter, we’ll bring our scarves together for a stunt outside Westminster. We're planning to attach all the scarves together, making a giant scarf that represents communities across the UK calling for action on warm homes. We’ll send a message to the government that we don’t want another winter where people go cold in their homes and energy is wasted unnecessarily.
Find out more about how we can win commitments from decision makers on warm homes.
