Project Details:
- BASIC’s NextGen project aims to inspire the next generation to think differently about nuclear weapons by injecting fresh thinking into the nuclear weapons discussion. It encourages and inspires people to creatively engage with resolving the complex issues.
- We’ve launched the Next Generation Policy Shapers Network as a platform aimed at bringing new voices into the debate and inspiring the next generation of policy shapers to develop and apply forward-thinking and experience beyond the nuclear field in order to create new approaches to progress. Click here to join the Next Generation Network and Subscriber list.
Our Approach:
- We believe that providing space for divergent view points is critical for progress. We realize that not everyone agrees with our assumption that nuclear weapons are a negative global influence. But rather than simply shouting louder about the need for disarmament, we want to ask ourselves – and those who disagree with us – why we are struggling to achieve it. Our approach reflects this: we aim to bring divergent viewpoints together to look for crossover rather than conflict.
Activities & Events:
- The BASIC team has hosted over a dozen focus groups with emerging policy shapers (the next gen shapers) in the US and UK to get perspectives on how this group of people communicate, how and why they take action, what issues they care about and why, and what they think (or don’t think) about nuclear weapons. This has helped us create a road map for engaging with the next generation.
- The BASIC team is exploring connections between nuclear weapons and other global challenges through extensive research with experts in a series of private roundtable discussions. We are particularly interested in connections with climate change, risk, security, media and public conversations, social psychology, and policy leadership.
- BASIC teamed up with Future Foreign Policy to host a networking event on 22 July 2015 for members of the Next Gen Shapers network.
- The first report from the Next Gen project is a compilation of finding from focus groups conducted with the next generation of policy shapers between October 2014 – March 2015.
- BASIC partnered with the UNA-UK for their youth conference on 29 May 2015 to talk about strategies to survive nuclear zero. Read about this event here.
- BASIC teamed up with WMD Awareness in 2014-15 to engage with the Next Generation in the United Kingdom in our #TalkingTrident event series. Read about these events here.
Why the NextGen?
190 countries have signed up to a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons under the NPT. But progress in getting rid of them and preventing their spread is too slow for comfort.
With the end of the Cold War, many people have forgotten that these weapons of total annihilation exist at all. And those that do talk about nuclear weapons don’t engage everyone in this complex discussion.
Meanwhile, the stakes remain high and the situation threatens to get worse.
We believe that progress in addressing the global challenges associated with nuclear weapons requires innovative thinking, fresh perspectives, and a renewed focus.
We are targeting the next generation of policy shapers to think critically today about the global issues that will affect our world tomorrow.