In April of this year, I organised a fundraising dinner for Simon Hughes in central London. Between courses we interviewed Nick Clegg, Lynne Featherstone and Simon about their early political interests and experiences. The answers were inspiring, the anecdotes hilarious and the audience were treated to a fascinating glimpse into the reasons why MPs get involved with politics in the first place.

The performances of Nick, Lynne and Simon challenged the all-too-common misperception that MPs are simply career politicians and members of a remote political class, far removed from the lives of the ordinary British public. Instead, the interviews highlighted a real diversity of backgrounds, professions and motivations in those who enter politics. After dinner, I experienced a eureka moment when a guest came to me and said, “If only the public could see the side of Nick we witnessed tonight”.  It was immediately evident that the interview format we trialled that evening could translate well into film, providing the party with a new and persuasive campaign medium.

With that end in mind, we have just launched a crowd-funding project on Indiegogo to raise £12,000 to film at least twenty 10-15 minute interviews with Liberal Democrat MPs and 2015 PPCs. The project is designed primarily as an extra campaign tool to help marginal and target seats meet their electoral objectives.  But we also hope to interview some of the party’s other leading lights if the budget allows. Backers can pledge as little as £1 to the project and there are rewards for backers who pledge from £25. You can even nominate your own MP or PPC to be interviewed for a pledge of £1000.

There are a number of uses for the films in local campaigns. For example, local parties can share links to their films with constituents via email and social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Another of our Indiegogo reward tiers offers candidates the chance to film their interview in front of a live constituency audience, which could also double up as a useful community engagement exercise to help combat the mood of anti-politics amongst significant numbers of the electorate, for example.
The film series will compliment the hard work of the fantastic local campaign teams nationwide, who are gearing up to fight the general election in May 2015. The beauty of the Indiegogo campaign is that it’s an activist driven initiative to help our marginals and to give our targets extra campaign firepower.

I urge everyone to visit our Indiegogo page and to pledge what they can to help get the film project successfully funded.

* Mark Bryceland is a Liberal Democrat member, activist and volunteer with Greenwich and Southwark Liberal Democrats