Getting Started With Narrative Change #2

Let’s begin with a story…

On 25th May 2018, the world shifted under the feet of the women of Ireland, when the country voted to repeal the 8th amendment to their constitution, making abortion accessible to all, over 150 years after it was first banned. The referendum had one of the highest voter-turnouts in history, turning the tide of generations of trauma.

Against all odds, a coalition of campaigners and activists fighting for abortion rights won under the banner of ‘Together For Yes’. And they did this against a backdrop of increasing attacks on abortion access in other parts of the world.

So, how did they do it?

Back in 2013, the coalition came together to reflect on the journey they’d travelled so far, aiming to develop a strategy to change the course of history. With a long history of division and campaign losses (through 5 related referendums in just 35 years) and a well-financed opposition, they knew they needed to build a wider grassroots movement—bringing people together across political and cultural lines— and that they needed a different narrative approach.

So they went back-to-basics and began a listening campaign, interrogating their assumptions about what they thought would work (centring trauma, debunking the opposition). They decided to see what people really thought about abortion. And they learnt that most people:

• disliked the divisiveness of both sides of the debate;
• felt there wasn’t a place for them to participate in the discussion, to share their questions, concerns and hopes;
• found the concept of abortion as a human right too abstract, but connected with the idea that abortion is a need for women’s wellbeing in the world.

They used this new understanding to help them build a new narrative strategy for their work.

“Narrative Strategy is the practice of sharing connected stories to forge, spread, and reinforce beneficial narratives and counter harmful ones. These stories must be aligned to have a cumulative impact. And to be effective, they must take us on a journey from where we are today to a better future, revealing a new way the world can and should work.”—Liz Manne Strategy

At the heart of their narrative strategy were three core values, their three ‘c’s’: care, compassion and change.

This approach built on the outstanding success of the 2015 Yes Equality campaign during the equal marriage referendum, which was centred on the shared values of generosity, equality, fairness and inclusivity.

By contrast, the anti-abortion ‘no’ campaign threw their substantial resources into a narrative strategy centred on fear and blame, with messaging that was graphic, in-your-face and confrontational. Business-as-usual, then.

Meanwhile, the ‘yes’ campaign were telling stories that:

1. reminded people of times and ways that Irish people had demonstrated collective spirit in the past,
2. showed how they’d fallen short on abortion, and
3. offered the opportunity to rectify this and create a better future.

The campaigners also created space for voters to contemplate what it would feel like if it would happen to them. One example of this, the #InHerShoes campaign, was centred on the experience of people who had (or hadn’t) had abortions. Because it drew on these real experiences, it highlighted the complex and circumstantial nature of all of our choices. It also appealed to people’s better nature: the slogan itself is a call for empathy and understanding, rather than sympathy.

Together For Yes! is a story of broad and deep coalition building, of circling round in community and organising the work of winning, together. Without these efforts, the movement for repealing the 8th amendment might not have succeeded.

We call this ‘narrative organising’.

Have you heard of ‘community organising’ as a practice? It is about bringing people together to win change, building community-led solutions to big and small problems, that work for everyone. Narrative organising takes this practice and brings a narrative focus to it.

Building relationships, networks of support, spaces of trust, and infrastructure to amplify the narratives that we need… this is the work that helps us shift the invisible web of forces—beliefs, values, worldviews—that maintain the status quo.

“Narrative organizing is the deliberate practice of bringing together people and organizations to support a shared narrative goal. Only together can we name shared values and harmful dominant narratives. It is a polyvocal (=many voices) practice. Different people and groups are able, and empowered, to speak to and work towards narrative change in their own voice. This work is active and relational.”—Narrative Initiative

At its core, narrative organising is about shifting power, as much within our movements as in wider society. In practice, this work can be challenging.

In the Together For Yes! campaign, research showed that women’s need for reproductive
health carried more positive resonance with middle-ground voters than women’s bodily autonomy and right to choose. As a result, the campaign leadership held a very tight line on their core messaging, and the majority of personal stories that were shared focussed on ‘hard cases’ such as diagnoses of fatal foetal anomaly. For many campaigners who had worked for years on the basis that access to abortion was a human right and the choice of each woman, this was a difficult compromise. Reflecting on the messaging strategy in retrospect, some feel that moving away from ‘right to choose’ language has limited the legislation that is being created in the wake of the referendum.

For me, this shines a light on the need for more trust-building space in our movements for exploring and unpacking our differences, carrying out our own research and making sense of it together, and coming to shared agreement on the path forward. More space for doing the strategy work together, which centres the wisdom of people most impacted by the injustices we’re fighting. And ideally we’d be doing this outside of those ‘crunch’ moments—before the referendums are announced, before our community centre gets threatened with closure, before another oil-drilling project is approved. So, let’s get cracking, shall we?!

“In a decolonized narrative ecosystem, grassroots groups and their members are… essential creators and drivers of narrative change.”—ReFrame

Let’s get reflective…

This week’s reflective questions

1. As we explored last week, this work is not new. Narrative change work is part of our movements’ dna. We are all connected to political lineages that stretch back: whether that be in the Black Feminist tradition, in the Trade Union struggles for the rights we hold today as workers, in the global solidarity of the peace movement, or in our historic fight for land justice. Narrative organising can be found within all of these lineages.
   So, what is your political lineage?*
2. Can you think of any examples of narrative change that inspire you—either from your own political tradition, or from that of other struggles? These examples could be from the here and now, or from history.

*Thanks to Shanelle and Marzena at RadComms for inspiring this question!

This week’s learning links

If you’ve got 15 minutes:

If you’re keen for more:

Got lots of time? Great:

In the next chapter, we’ll dive deeper into the ‘how’ of narrative organising: grounding in our values and vision. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any questions or feedback you’d like to share, feel free to drop us an email on courses@publicinterest.org.uk