Contribute

What is Frontline Notes?

Frontline Notes is an online publication for organisers, campaigners, and change-makers shaping progressive movements across Europe. It’s a space for honest reflection and shared learning, so that hard-won lessons don’t remain scattered across the varied campaigns, contexts, and languages of our continent.

There’s a rich tradition of debating movement strategy in the US, and many of us have learned from it. But Europe’s political landscape is different: our electoral systems, welfare states, histories of organising, and the threats we face are our own. Much of the wisdom from organising across the continent, from Portugal to Romania, from Greece to Sweden, remains untapped and unshared. Language barriers and the absence of a common platform mean countless lessons are lost. Frontline Notes exists to change that.

We are especially committed to creating space for voices too often missing from strategic conversations: those working under repression, organising at the margins, and without institutional backing. Our aim is to actively lower these barriers through editorial support, pay, translation, and care.

What we publish

Every piece we publish is grounded in lived experience. We’re not looking for analysis from a distance, we want reflections from people who are actually doing the work.

Our core format is the short article (roughly 800-1,500 words), although we’re flexible on length. What matters most is the substance. You don’t need a finished story with a neat conclusion: some of the most valuable pieces will come from people still in the middle of a fight, wrestling with questions that don’t have answers yet. You can write in your native language – we’ll take care of translating the piece into English.

Priority themes we’re actively commissioning on:

Climate, through lenses of social and economic justice: e.g. just transition
Race and migration: e.g. anti-racist organising, migrant solidarity
Fighting the far-right: e.g. defending democratic space, building alternatives

We welcome pitches on any progressive issue. These are starting points, not exclusive categories.

Guiding questions

We don’t have a rigid template. But across all our pieces, we want authors to engage with a set of questions that form a consistent spine for the publication. You don’t need to answer all of them – think of them as prompts to draw out the most useful insights from your experience. A piece that engages deeply with even one or two of these lenses is exactly what we're looking for.

Strategy	What decision, tension, or dilemma shaped this moment? What options were on the table? Why did you choose the path you did?
Power	How was power built, blocked, negotiated, or misunderstood? Who had leverage? Who didn’t? What surprised you about how power actually moved?
Learning	What would you repeat? What would you avoid? What questions are still unresolved?
Culture	How did relationships shape what happened? Where was trust strong or weak? How did people’s behaviours affect progress or slow things down?

Style and voice

We want you to sound like yourself. No NGO-speak, no academic or leftie jargon, no rehearsed talking points. Write like a human being talking to other people who care about the same things you do. The guiding questions above are there to help you reflect, not to impose a structure. Start with the story; the analysis will follow.

Authenticity over perfection. The “Notes” in our name is deliberate. We’d rather have a raw, honest reflection than a perfectly crafted essay that says nothing new.
Honesty about failure. What didn’t work is often more instructive than what did. We encourage you to share setbacks, not just victories.
Practical insight. Your piece should leave the reader with something they can think about, try, or adapt in their own context.
Accessible language. Write for a broad audience of people in progressive movements, not specialists. If a concept needs explaining, explain it.
Your voice. We don’t have a publication style that flattens everything into the same tone. We want the diversity of European movements to come through in how our authors write.

What you get as an author

Compensation	€150 per published article.
Editorial support	We’ll work with you to shape your piece: from drawing out your core reflections to structuring the essay and refining the writing. This is a collaborative process, not a top-down edit. Typically this will involve a conversation about your experience, one or two rounds of feedback on a draft, and a final review before publication.
Skills development	Writing for Frontline Notes is a chance to develop your public voice. Our editorial process is designed to be a learning experience – not just for the piece itself, but for how you communicate your ideas going forward.
Visibility	Your article will be promoted to our network of organisers, campaigners, and movement leaders across Europe through our newsletter and social media channels.
Translation	Write in your native language. We’ll handle translation into English so language is never a barrier to participation.

How to pitch

Send us a short pitch (a few sentences to a paragraph) telling us what you want to write about and why. Include a line or two about who you are and the work you’re involved in.

Not sure if your idea fits? Get in touch anyway – we’re happy to think it through with you before you commit to anything.

Once a pitch is accepted, we'll agree on a timeline that works for you – typically four to six weeks from first draft to publication.

We’re especially keen to hear from organisers who might not think of themselves as “writers”. If you’re doing the work, you have something worth sharing.

Get in touch: contribute@frontlinenotes.org
We aim to respond to all pitches within two weeks.

Frontline Notes is an independent initiative by Fatima Ibrahim, Nicolò Wojewoda, and Dominika Lasota – three organisers who believe Europe needs shared infrastructure for movement strategy. We’re not launching this as owners, but as convenors. Our hope is to build it alongside others.