# Introduction

Written in a moment of multiple challenges – environmental, economic, political, social and health-related – ‘Introduction to making political and social change’ gives you a grounding in some of the key citizenship skills and political knowledge you need to intervene in the world as it changes around you. This free course explores how you can make change politically and socially as an active citizen, giving essential background information to get started, examples of inspiring changemakers, advice on how to have an impact both within and outside of traditional UK parliamentary politics, and the qualities needed to succeed. The course is primarily aimed at UK citizens, although much of the content will apply to people living outside of the UK.

Figure 1: The UK Parliament (top left), Northern Ireland Assembly (top right), Scottish Parliament (middle left), European Parliament (middle right), Welsh Parliament (bottom left) and an example of political protest outside the UK Parliament (bottom right).

This OpenLearn course is adapted from The Open University’s Changemakers guide, but has been expanded to include content on the devolved nations and global change.

This OpenLearn course links to the Open University course D113: Global Challenges: Social Science in Action, now open for registration.

OpenLearn - Introduction to making political and social change
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.