Toward New Gravity: Charting a Course for the Narrative Initiative

"Narrative work, the shifting of consciousness and values, is not just a long game, it is the long game. It is not just about finding the right words to spread particular messages, but the ability to activate the underlying values and beliefs behind those messages. It's about normalizing justice, inclusivity and equity."

The Narrative Initiative is a capacity-building and network space for leaders and organisations dedicated to creating a world where equity and justice are common sense. In early February 2017, the newly launched team embarked on a listening tour of over 100 people from a range of disciplines and communities who are working on issues of social justice and narrative change. Interview participants - movement organisers, advocates, media producers and content creators, trainers, scholars and scientists, communications professionals, and other influential voices - identified challenges, lessons, best practices, and needs, including the recurring desire for sharper definitions of terms related to story and narrative. This report shares some of the conversations; it is a living document that will be revisited, revised, and rethought as the Narrative Initiative develops.

Envisioned as something critical to effecting change in systems, policies, and practices, narrative change is an approach grounded in the realm of language, meaning-making, and symbols. In October 2016, the Ford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies announced the creation of the Narrative Initiative, as new conditions, trends, and realities were revealed, including:

• The evolving use of data and social media - The proliferation of digital communications tools, mediums, and platforms means that symbols can succeed over substance in the new public square. "Combined with increasingly sophisticated harnessing of big data, psychometrics and profiling, and 'fake news,' the 2016 [United States (US) presidential] election saw techniques of meaning-making and technologies of influencing behavior in ways previously unseen."
• The vulnerability of democratic institutions - "Common threads are stitching together populist narratives - xenophobia and racism fueled by migration and demographic change, disaffection with economic liberalism and market fundamentalism, and disenchantment with establishment political parties."
• The power of political campaigns and candidates to shape narratives, especially ones that nurture feelings of belonging and marginalisation. These narratives subconsciously delineate who is in your group and who is not - who "we" are. In that context, and "[g]iven the contemporary iterations of this project, what is the role and responsibility of civil society and social movements?"

As the report goes on to outline, social-justice-oriented narrative work involves categories across a large spectrum. Some of these (sometimes overlapping and integrated) categories include the following (with concrete examples provided in the paper):

• Cognitive and social science - "By applying the lessons of psychology, cognition and linguistics to social change communications, organizations can activate narratives that support their goals and help rewire common sense, public opinion and political beliefs."
• Strategic communications - Work is being undertaken that involves "engaging social change organizations in an effort to embed a media power analysis, messaging and communications strategies on the front-end of campaigns and goals, in concert with the deployment of other tactics like arts and culture engagement to achieve longer-term impact."
• Big data research and analysis - Services are available that "scrape big data, harness algorithms and offer quantitative approaches to inform campaigns at both their inception and evaluation."
• Storytelling and sharing - For instance, "Organizations like the National SEED Project and Narrative 4 use interpersonal engagement, testimony and story sharing workshops to reach individuals across political (and narrative) divides with the aim of building bridges and transforming attitudes and beliefs."
• Movement building - This work draws on the power of narrative to motivate and mobilise people toward a political call to action.
• Creatives and cultural organisers - "Influencing mass audiences through music, film and TV, videogames, comedy, sports and faith is critical to shifting values and changing public discourse. Visual artists, documentarians and celebrities can play outsized roles in conveying particular messages that inject and legitimize values and diversity of thought into culture with broad appeal and distribution....Although there is no set formula for cultural engagement, effective models can operate upstream or downstream of cultural and creative content, and are largely based on personal and professional relationships."
• Narrative strategists - These individuals "work closely with groups to help design strategy at the organizational level, aspiring to fundamentally shift group orientation to long-term cultural change."

Further observations related to the field of narrative change at large:

• There is a need for regular sharing of lessons from success and setbacks between peer communities of researchers; perhaps offering prizes for work in this field could create incentives for new networks to form and solidify.
• Although a generation of tools (software, platforms, and services) that leverage big data and quantitative analysis are newly available to social justice leaders and organisations, they are not necessarily accessible.
• A number of the stakeholders who were interviewed lamented that there is currently no trusted space ("strategy table") where narrative leaders can align, integrate, and iterate.
• A critical mass of campaigners, consultants, and communicators working in the field of narrative change needs to be nurtured and supported.

In conclusion: "Aspiring for culture shift and narrative change will require unprecedented levels of alignment, coordination and creativity....The slow, hard work of issue-specific policy change is akin to pushing a heavy rock up a steep hill, sometimes only to see it roll back down...We know the terrain is tilted against us, as we struggle with deeply ingrained ideas about gender, race, the role of government, religion and market fundamentalism, to name just a few....Instead of pushing rocks up a hill, what would it look like to reshape the terrain itself? What, after all, would it feel like to have gravity on our side?"