Join us at 12pm Thursday 24th November to discuss how to diversify, democratise and decolonise narrative and communications work in the UK: sign-up here.
Our societies are built on narratives. These narratives—of our past, present and future—provide the scaffolding for our political systems, our social structures, and our own thinking.
The old narratives told us things would only get better; if we work hard, we’ll do well in life; and some of us are better than others. These narratives have failed us. Across the world, we see a rise in authoritarian, nationalist and isolationist narratives which have terrible impacts on the lives of women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, Gypsies and Travellers, migrants, workers, and the environment.
We need new narratives, to help bring new worlds into being. And we need new spaces, strategies and ways of coming together to build those new narratives. Otherwise, in the words of our friend and associate Elena Blackmore, “we’re likely to be recreating the same old familiar patterns”.
At PIRC, whilst we are a small organisation, we know we have power and resources as one of the few organisations in the UK funded to support narrative change work. We also know that knowledge and funding have historically been gatekept by a privileged few, including ourselves.
How do we change that?
For us, that’s started with building a new strategy for the coming years—aiming to redistribute resources and take deeper leadership from those with lived experience in our movements for change. We’re also decolonising our training curriculum and how we deliver it; broadening the heavily white western knowledge-base that acts as the foundation of our research; continuing our work towards anti-oppressive organisational practices (like developing a more care-centred safeguarding policy, guided by the beautiful work of Maslaha); and cooking up an exciting new Narrative Leadership Programme, which we’ll share more about soon.
And we want to do this in community, with you!
So, we’ll be holding an online conversation at 12pm on Thursday 24th November to explore what ‘decolonising narratives and narrative change work’ means to us. Hannah and Yas from the PIRC team will be joined by our friends Elena Blackmore, Maya Bhardwaj and Kennedy Walker, as we unpack the concepts, explore societal narratives and movement/sector practices, and share our hopes and dreams for the work ahead. And we’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions and questions.
Sign-up to join the conversation at:
pirc-decolonising-narratives.eventbrite.co.uk
The discussion will be hosted on Zoom, using their audio-transcription service. If you have any further access needs please drop us a message on: hello@publicinterest.org.uk
We know this is long-term work, but we’re committed to the long-haul, and we’d love to hear your ideas for where we go next, together?
