We advocate a movement-building values-led approach to narrative change: participatory, connected and equitable.
This is because we don’t believe that meaningful social change can be effected in isolated groups, nor when spaces are inaccessible to many. Instead, we need a connected and accessible approach within our organisations and our movements.
We work with groups in civil society to build framing and narrative strategies that can shift cultures. We believe that for narratives to do the work they need to do—uniting movements and giving people voice—the process of developing and telling stories is as important as the content that is actually produced.
Increasingly, then, we have come to see the need to organise in anti-oppressive and democratic ways as integral to our approach. We’ve started by redesigning our own organisational structure so that it is rooted in practices that are both more aligned with our values and make us a more effective team. We’re working to develop this work further to enable others in our movement to work to their potential.
Our work is strongly rooted in the social sciences and in participatory practices. Social psychologists Shalom Schwartz and Anat Bardi have shown us the importance of intrinsic values; researcher-storyteller Brene Brown and cognitive linguist George Lakoff have taught us the impact of stories on ourselves and our culture; Anat Shenker-Osorio, the FrameWorks Institute and the Centre for Story Based Strategy, have all informed our methods of developing and testing frames; Training for Change, bell hooks and Paulo Freire have influenced our pedagogy; we’ve been inspired by Edge Fund, more like people, movements such as Black Lives Matter and Sisters Uncut, Platform and our constantly evolving friends at NEON in our understanding of radical organising and organisations.
