How studying MSc Behaviour Change at Derby shaped Claire's future video transcript

My name is Claire Thompson. I am the Strategic  Lead for Insights at Northeast Lincolnshire  

Council. My role changed a year into the  programme. I moved from a insights and marketing  

role in the council's communications team. My  current role - I lead a big team in the council  

in the centre of the council who are responsible  for research and engagement, community development  

wherever we can. We also support service design  projects and I also manage all of our data teams  

as well. I've been working for a long time in  marketing - absolutely passionate about using  

marketing for social good. And came across lots  of work where I was using social marketing and  

that led me down a route of learning about the  difference that sort of thinking about behaviour  

can make to the sort of campaigns that you'd  develop and found out about Behaviour Change  

at that point. Did quite a bit of learning on  my own and had worked with organisations like  

the National Behavioural Insights team, done  some social marketing training as well with  

the National Social Marketing Center, and then  thought actually I want to do this properly and I  

want a qualification in it and I found the one at  Derby which fitted in with my life because it was  

a three-year masters - I couldn't do it full-time.  My team get involved in all sorts of things from  

work with communities to - somebody might come  to us with a problem where the recycling rates  

are too low or we want to try and encourage  (INAUDIBLE) so as the team that's in the central  

function and they're taking on more of a behaviour  change role, I'm actually sort of encouraging the  

change within the organisation as well as using it  for some of those pieces of work where people come  

to us with a problem that they're trying to solve,  and we also have used it in terms of how we change  

the organisation to think differently about how  we work with communities as well. So the the one  

that springs to mind for me is when we've actually  thought about the environment and behaviour - I  

chose the environment and conservation pathway  cause I'm passionate about that area but when we  

talked about tree planting as an organisation  we've planted a lot of trees with the council  

over the last probably 10-15 years and every  time we plant trees they get broken they get  

ripped out there's a lot of antisocial behaviour  around new new trees being planted. What we  

did was we thought about what was going on in  those communities and engaged children in the  

wards where we were planting those communities and  we've planted over the last 2 or 3 years alongside  

community organisations, we've planted probably  450 trees and because we brought in community  

groups, schools - particularly primary schools -  we've had 10 damaged over the last two years. So  

it it's changed because the kids have actually  been involved in that planting and understanding  

trees and where where the damage has happened,  we've actually had my team go in and actually talk  

to the children in those schools in those areas  so we're using some of that environmental learning  

and the approaches to behaviour change to actually  get in to talk to children so hopefully it won't  

happen again in the future. I didn't do great  in my first degree. I did great in my HND but  

this time I've come out with a merit which is  more than I expected to get because of the amount  

of time that the new job has taken me and the team  I've got and the pressure that there is at work to  

actually get that and actually the the subject I  chose for my final study was something that I was  

passionate about and it allowed me to go in and  actually speak to young people, talk to them about  

their experiences in childhood of the environment,  and the impact that has made on their current  

sort of environmental behaviour. And it sort of  proves some points which we talked about - Derby  

are doing some amazing stuff in terms of nature  connection but what it did was sort of prove some  

of that in terms of young people's behaviour and  what they're actually doing for the environment  

based on what they've done in their childhood, so  I think for me, yes passing, but actually stuff  

that I can use in the future when we're actually  talking to young people and getting them out in  

the woods and digging and doing all sorts of  things that we need to be doing with kids.