Welcome to Magpie’s Great Campaign round-up of news and musings to inspire and excite you!

As we reach the unexpected one year anniversary of working from our remote Magpie nests, it’s incredible to reflect on the amount of behaviour change we’ve all undertaken this year. The creation of more healthier and happier communities has been a shining light in what at times, felt like a bleak period for everyone. And those new communities with new connections combined with the knowledge of the positive impact each of us can have, is an incredible foundation to take forward in 2021.

Sticking with interesting insight and meaningful behaviour change – as is our way, we have lots to share about our Great Campaign to create healthier and happier communities…

Magpie’s Yorkshire Wellbeing Check-in

We’re passionate about understanding communities and what makes them tick. We’ve taken a temperature check to see how the people of Yorkshire have handled this incredible year and keep us in touch with what really matters to people.

We learnt that:

  • Men’s overall wellbeing reduced more than women’s
  • Over half of participants are not achieving the government’s recommended 2.5 hours per week of exercise
  • Confidence levels in visiting GPs, clinics or hospitals for health reasons nearly doubled across the 6-month period
  • People felt more confident in asking for help from friends or community, or offering to help friends or family across the 6 months

Read the full results on our blog.

Positive Change Makers – The 20 Minute Movement

We asked people across the Bradford district to join the 20 Minute Movement after they told us they want to exercise more, eat better and do things that make them feel good about themselves.

The 20 Minute Movement is not about the expensive gym or fancy trainers; it’s about the simple things, day to day that keep you healthy and happy. We recruited local heroes, took photographs and are testing videos to help show the movement in action by real people like Fozia and her daughter who love to cycle and Deborah and Ross who love a kitchen disco!

These fantastic ambassadors have featured across social media, advertising and in the press. If you want to help us encourage more people to be active for 20 little minutes a day – we have loads of resources you can use! You can download anything you need from the toolkit.

Check-In campaign takes network marketing approach to create impact

At Magpie we are a team of network builders, galvanising local influencers; providing the tools and training for campaign legacies to continue after our job is done. Working in partnership with the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership we developed, and launched, the Check-In campaign which aims to prevent staff suicide and promote a wellbeing culture through normalising the conversation around suicide and mental health. Practically it provides training, resources and signposting for support.


Campaign materials and Healthwatch Kirklees visiting Manorcroft care home in Dewsbury on ‘Time to Talk Day’ with their conversation packs to launch Check-In.

It’s an issue that is gaining more and more prominence through high profile deaths like Caroline Flack and Robin Williams and just this week, Roman Kemp’s BBC documentary – Our Silent Emergency. Our online toolkit enables any organisation of any size to roll out the campaign. Over 180 organisations are already signed up and 330 people have accessed the Zero Suicide Alliance’s suicide awareness training.

Five Ways to Wellbeing – Partner Survey

We are working with Leeds City Council to develop a campaign shaping the Five Ways to Wellbeing. The pandemic is not only aggravating existing mental health issues, but also contributing to newly emerged ones, such as anxiety, depression and loneliness in people who may not have experienced mental health issues before.

We cannot create this campaign without the steer and input from partners across the city. If you’re based in Leeds and are associated with Wellbeing as part of your role, we need your help to create this campaign. Please can you take 5 minutes to complete our survey?

Take the Survey.

How Behavioural Science can improve your COVID-19 campaign

There has been much debate around the Government’s and Mullen Lowe’s hard hitting ‘Look me in the eye’ COVID-19 campaign. In this blog Dr Grainne Dickerson, our Behavioural Insights Consultant examines how behavioural science and, in particular Social Psychology, tells us how we could improve the effectiveness of this campaign by applying a few key lessons to it’s content and positioning. (3-Minute read)

More new change makers join the flock


L to R: Louise, Michelle, Sharondeep and Lee

It’s been a busy year recruiting new team members to Magpie. Our flock is expanding and we’d like to welcome…

Louise Hallworth and Michelle Horne both join the leadership team as Campaign Consultants. Michelle offers expertise in public relations, specialising in parenting, while Louise has a background working with the public and third sector.

Sharondeep Kaur Sandhu joins us from Flamingo Land where she was their Digital Marketing Manager, to work across JU:MP and other key projects. Did you know Flamingo Land has recently released two Black Rhinos back into the wild?

And we welcome Lee Freeman to the design team. His creative excites, entertains, and solves problems!

Exciting times ahead for co-founder Gerard Savva

Magpie’s co-founder Ged, is taking a well-earned, year-long sabbatical from front-line Magpie work from April (consider it a temporary migration). Over the last few months he has been stepping back gradually and downloading the wealth of knowledge to the team during our fortnightly University of Magpie sessions.

We’ve been planning for this for around six months to ensure a smooth transition. Ged will continue to input on the strategic direction of Magpie and be regularly connected with the Board. Kim Somerville steps up as Magpie’s new Managing Director (more about Kim next time).

It’s an exciting opportunity for Ged and for those that know him, you’ll appreciate that a year probably isn’t long enough for him to realise all of his ambitions! He plans to explore his creative side, study, travel (when we’re allowed) and generally take this year to come back more invigorated. We hope you’ll join us in wishing him a fantastic year to explore new ideas, opportunities and dreams.

Want to know more about these thoughts, musings or chat about how we can help you make more positive social change contact kim.somerville@wearemagpie.com.

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Take care, stay safe and we really hope we can see you in person this year.

Ged Savva and Becky Dam
Magpie Co-founders