Your narrative and culture change roundup! 📢
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A warm hello to you all,
So much is happening across the world at the moment that I sometimes find myself feeling paralysed by the immensity of the challenges we face. Speaking to friends and colleagues over the past few weeks, I know many others feel the same.
I hope this newsletter plays a small part in shining a light on the huge number of people working tirelessly, in a myriad of ways, to support the conditions necessary for a new world to come into being. I wish for you a moment of calm, to step back from the magnitude of the challenges that surround us, and to be reminded anew of the immense resolve and hunger that so many people feel for a new way of living and being together, in communion with this beautiful planet we call home.
I, like many of us, am needing to put in place some careful boundaries at the moment. I try my best to write and send this newsletter every 2 weeks, but I’ve needed a little more time away from my laptop recently. I’m reading just as much as ever though, so this is some what of a bumper edition with plenty of links to get stuck into. I promise to keep sending In Other Words as often as I’m able, but I might deviate from the schedule a little - forgive me.
For now, I’d like to leave you with something that Ava DuVernay said in an interview with Time that I’ve come back to multiple times over the past few weeks:
“What gives me hope in these tenuous times is the knowledge that there is precedent for change and there’s precedent for hope. Hope has bred change again and again.”
With a weary heart, but also an abundance of hope, I leave you to explore this week’s links.
Love,
Ruth x
p.s. This edition’s ‘words to live by’ was pinched from Lucy Caldicott’s great newsletter, ‘ChangeOut’.
THE LINKS
Articles, reports & podcasts.
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A beautiful new illustrated journey through the wonderful ‘Stories for Life’ project, written by Dan Burgess and Paddy Loughman.
Mindworks: The Crisis Handbook Mindworks Lab have released the third and final part of The Disrupted Mind series, exploring how changemakers can harness the power of crises to positively shift mindsets. This new toolkit provides a deck of cards, designed to help you navigate the different stages of crisis. The Mindworks team have also set up a new slack space where folks from across the world can come together to share learning on how to shift mindsets and build alternative narratives. [Mindworks Lab]
Reset Narratives Community Reset Narratives, which set up during the pandemic, has now launched a new shiny website and Medium publication to house its newsletters, as well as articles written by members of its community. You can also spend hours getting lost in its narrative insight archive - a wonderful collation of narrative work segmented into theme and type. I love and really appreciate the ‘movement generous’ ethos found in this work - an alternative narrative of togetherness and interconnection in and of itself! Thanks so much for all you do Paddy Loughman and Ella Saltmarshe. [Reset Narratives]
Post-COP26 Narrative Report Culture Hack Labs had their ears to the internet during COP26 in order to spot who the most influential communities were and what narratives were emerging during the conference. This report outlines what they found (shocker: some of it is actually positive!) and also provides some excellent next steps for the climate justice movement as a whole. [Culture Hack Labs]
Turning the Tide: Landscape analysis of an emergent economic movement in Europe This newly published report maps the new economic movement across Europe, seeking to better understand the ways different actors are challenging the neoliberal project and contributing to the development of an alternative model. The report doesn’t explicitly map narrative actors in this space, but does make mention of work being done to craft new narratives around economics and economic life. [Demos Helsinki]
Mapping the UK climate movement The wonderful Natasha Adams has mapped out the UK climate movement in order to better understand its strengths, weaknesses and gaps - no easy feat! Some immensely interesting insights shared in this summary blog. Recommendation 5 feels especially important to me from a narrative point of view. [Thinking, Doing, Changing]
In conversation with Alice Sachrajda and Marzena Zukowska: Leveraging pop culture for social change On the latest Social Change Agency Podcast you can hear from Alice and Marzena on the intersection between pop culture and social and environmental justice, and the opportunities which exist if we invest in this area more. [Social Change Agency]
Our Relationship to The Future: Narratives, Imagination Skills and Futures Literacy The Horizons Project team have compiled an excellent list of resources to help changemakers explore the question of how we think and talk about the future. [Horizons Project]
Healing division through exploration of shared values A new addition to the On Belonging in Europe paper series, written by my wonderful colleague, Tom Crompton, this piece develops the argument that dialogue across points of difference can evolve from a deepened appreciation of shared values. [Othering and Belonging Institute]
Rinku Sen: Practical ways to create narrative change Have a listen to this podcast interviewing Rinku Sen, the Executive Director of the Narrative Initiative in the US, talking about what it means to build narrative power. [Apple Podcasts]
Why we need a Queer environmental movement Lewis Carr, campaigner and strategic communicator for Friends of the Earth, has written this great piece on the ways that embedding queer epistemologies into the climate movement could make for greater impact. [LinkedIn]
On the Frontlines of the Climate Emergency: Where Immigrants Meet Climate Change An interesting new report, commissioned by Unbound Philanthropy, making the argument for increased philanthropic investment at the intersection of immigrant and climate justice. I particularly enjoyed the section on narrative (starting on page 15), which highlights how activists need to be aware of how the narrative strategy they employ can cause unintended, negative effects for other movements. I agree wholeheartedly with the premise of this report, and would love to see it go further through recognising the shared, underlying motivations for support of climate and immigrant justice, and not simply relying on policy overlap. [Unbound Philanthropy] [Recommended by Alice Sachrajda]
Making History Matter: From Abstract Truth to Critical Engagement A new report from the Frameworks Institute looking at how Americans understand history and how communicators can more effectively explain why history matters to society. A super fascinating read! Who would fund a similar project in the UK? [Frameworks Institute]
Citizens by Jon Alexander If you haven’t heard, Jon Alexander has written a book! Its official release date is this week and Jon has been very busy speaking on just about every podcast under the sun. You can catch Jon talking about the important message of the book here, here, here and here, and preorder your copy through Jon’s website. Huge congratulations, Jon! [Jon Alexander]
Changing the narrative around homelessness A great, succinct video on tips to change the narrative around homelessness from filmmaker Paul Atherton, who has lived experience of homelessness himself. * Deleting the term ‘the homeless’ from my vernacular * [Twitter]
The missing ingredient to fight the climate crisis: positive fictional role models Professor Denise Baden writes about the importance of fictional role models who embody different cultural values and in turn influence how the general public think and feel about sustainability. Although I very much agree with the power of fictional characters to affect our everyday lives, I would disagree with the use of competitions as a method to encourage more writers to create them, due to it engaging the very same values we’re hoping to see diminish in importance culturally. (Come along to Values 101 if you’d like to explore this more ;) ). [The Conversation]
They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine Much has been written (and rightly so!) about the racial bias being demonstrated in much of the media coverage of the unfolding crisis in Ukraine. I’m including just one article here, written by Professor and author Moustafa Bayoumi. What we’re reading and hearing in the press starkly highlights some of the deeply entrenched narratives that permeate mainstream cultures across Europe and the US around superiority and who is worthy of solidarity and support, as well as the nature of war itself (‘natural’ or ‘inescapable’ for ‘some’ countries - coded racial language to signify countries across Africa and the Middle East). We may be seeing these narratives in an unsaturated way in current reporting, but it is important to remember that they are always present - only instantiated in different ways. [The Guardian]
The politics of the charity sector The anonymous author of Wonk Watch reflects on a conference where framing research conducted by the Frameworks Institute on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was presented. I’d be super interested to see a response from Frameworks on this, as to how well it summarises their approach. [Wonk Watch]
Why we should stop calling it the “cost-of-living crisis” A great piece in The New Statesman exploring the fire-fighting and fatalistic framing of the “cost-of-living crisis” phrase and who it benefits (spoiler: it isn’t the everyday person on the street!) [New Statement]
UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Things for the calendar.
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Over the course of a week, attendees are invited to take part in an online journey exploring what drives different emotional responses to climate change, and some practical ways to build hope about the future. The series, organised by Common Vision, Climate Cares and Force of Nature, includes Q&As, guided DIY activities, imagination exercises and discussion groups. I’m on a panel on Wednesday 16th March talking about how different narratives about climate change influence public understanding.
Between Monday 14 March - Friday 18 March
10-30 mins exercises per day & live lunchtime masterclasses
Designed for participants under the age of 30, but all ages welcome
Online
Free to attend
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A Future for All of Us: Narrative Strategy for the Immigrant Movement
Join Race Forward’s current cohort of immigrant narrative leaders to hear about their work as part of the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy, building narrative power and aligning narrative strategy for the migrant and immigrant justice movement.
Tuesday 15 March
10am - 11am PT / 1pm - 2pm ET / 5pm - 6pm GMT
Online
Free to attend
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From consumer to citizen - changing the narrative
As well as being a podcaster extraordinaire, Jon Alexander is also a dab-hand at a live stream. You can join Jon for a RSA-facilitated online conversation, exploring the question of what it would look like to involve people as citizens and not consumers.
Thursday 17 March
1pm - 2pm GMT
Online
Free to attend
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Values 101: Growing public demand for change
Join me and my colleagues at the Common Cause Foundation on this 5 week workshop series to explore human values and how they can be engaged to generate broader and deeper commitment to pro-social and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours.
5 x 2 hr weekly sessions throughout May
Tickets priced on a sliding scale from free to £225
Zoom
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The Workshop, based in New Zealand, have announced the dates for their first public training workshops for 2022. It’s split into two modules. Foundation 1 is a self-paced online course, whilst Foundations 2 is delivered via zoom over 4 weekly sessions.
Foundations 1: 2 - 27 May
Foundations 2: 2 - 23 June
Online
Scaled prices
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The Power to Create: Pop Culture & Narrative Change
Originally scheduled for January, this event has been postponed to 27 May, so you still have time to sign up! Hear from speakers who are driving social change through harnessing the power of pop culture and in particular, TV/film, gaming and comedy.
Friday 27 May
6pm - 8pm GMT
Southbank Centre, London
Free - tickets can be found here
Words to Live By
Clever people saying clever things.
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