Hi everyone,
Welcome to this edition, which we’re sending during the last week of COP28.
Ella was there in the first week, witnessing the growing recognition of the importance of narrative and culture work. There are two new pavilions running in the Blue Zone: the Culture & Entertainment Pavillion & the Storytelling for Action Pavillion, alongside the initiative led by Julie’s Bicycle to bring culture into the heart of the process, and a guide to Tackle Greenwashing at COP from Creatives for Climate.
This week we have an invite to our special end-of-year collective reflection, where we’ll try and make sense of this challenging year. Plus the recording from last week’s curated session focused on the disinformation industry and how it’s delaying climate action.
Our shares include the latest insight on mobilising public climate action, both globally and in the UK, a new creative agency working for nature, and a view of how to build a funding ecosystem for collective justice.
Shared in solidarity.
Session
2023 Collective Reflection
Dec 14th, 1-2pm GMT | Online
Want to try and make sense of what 2023 has meant for your narrative work? What you’re learning, what’s hard, what’s uncertain?
This community has grown to 660+ people, from an incredible range of backgrounds, interests, practices, issue-areas and movements. We are activists, funders, comms leaders, campaigners, politicians, journalists, marketers, film-makers, academics, economists, business-owners, artists and sense-makers. There is much we can learn through collective reflection.
So as we come to the end of this turbulent year, we’re programming a special session to offer time to reflect with others in a structured way. We look forward to seeing you there.
Climate Consensus: Building Resilience and Reclaiming our Digital Spaces
Recording
Watch Imran Ahmed’s curated session, where we heard about the “diffuse and very profitable disinformation industry” (Michael Khoo); that “we’re bleeding in that really important space between where public opinion stops and policy outcomes begins – that is where power is” (Tom Brookes); and that “good communication is not the primary challenge, our primary challenge is showing people what the world will look like when we win” (Kate Cell):
🎬 See here
Shares
Key: 📋 Report | 📢 Campaign | 🎬 Video | 📝 Article
Global Report: Later Is Too Late To Act On Climate Change
Potential Energy, Yale Climate Change Communication, Meliore Foundation
Multiple framings of 18 different policies were tested with nearly 60,000 people across 23 countries (accounting for 70% of the world’s population) to explore two questions: “1) Does the world want action on climate? 2) How can we motivate the public to accelerate progress?” Alongside finding that “urgent, generational” messaging is effective, they also find that ‘limitation’ frames, including the words “mandate, ban or phaseout,” have much lower support compared to frames like “upgrading, setting standards, making solutions accessible, and reducing dependency.”
#narrativestrategy #messaging #insight
Towards A Citizen-led Reality Check
People Get Real (UK)
“By refusing to call time on implausible climate targets, trusted messengers – such as climate scientists and environmental charity leaders – are providing inadvertent permission for the public to continue minimising the reality of climate breakdown,” resulting in “the sustained absence of widespread public support for meaningful action.” Their recent survey finds “the general public is ready to be told what is actually going on, and ready to receive invitations to help them do something about it.”
#issuenarrative #insight
📢 See here
Agency For Nature
Glimpse and Purpose Disruptors
“An experiment in the future of creativity”, asking “what if our creativity was used in service to life on earth?” Their brief to the marketing industries (and beyond): “We need to help human civilisation come back to life. To remember that nature is our extended family, the original source of beauty, solace and joy. To rekindle an ember that somewhere, deep down, still glows within them.” Also see The Good Advert, and the more wry Atmospheric Agency.
#narrativestrategy #deepnarrative #tactics
📢 See here
Animation: Change the Conversation on Racism
Reframing Race
“The conversation on racism is stuck. But with a formidable bank of data, Reframing Race has learned that new ways of talking about racism can lead to new ways of listening and thinking.” This 2 minute animation quickly and accessibly introduces these findings to make them practical and memorable. Also see.
#issuenarrative #tactics
Dear White Environmentalists: Demanding Fossil-fuel Phaseout Is Not Enough
Nafeez M Ahmed, Age Of Transformation
COP28 is swirling around the debate about whether to ‘phase down’ or ‘phase out’ fossil fuels. But “the blanket demand to eliminate fossil fuels is widely perceived across the developing world as an ill-conceived and self-serving colonial narrative promoted by Western interests.” Nafeez argues that “instead of focusing on dismantling the incumbent system, we need to focus on accelerating the deployment of the new system that will replace it…because that’s the only way that demand for oil and gas can be eliminated.” This may account for some of PE’s findings above.
#issuenarrative #tactics
Leading News Outlets Are Doing the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Greenwashing
Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green, The Intercept and Drilled
“The enormous influence oil and gas executives are wielding at COP28 has thrown commercial partnerships between media outlets and the fossil fuel industry into sharper focus. Climate reporters at every outlet we analyzed have diligently covered the challenges that the industry’s so-called solutions face, but when that reporting is placed alongside corporate-sponsored content touting the technologies’ benefits, it leaves readers confused” and leaves climate reporters in fear of their employers’ “gross,” “undermining,” and “dangerous” behaviour.
#issuenarrative #tactics
The ‘Climate Migration’ Narrative Is Inaccurate, Harmful, and Pervasive. We Need an Alternative
Samuel Huckstep and Helen Dempster, Centre For Global Development
“If climate activists want to spur support for green policies, their pitch should focus on unjust heightening of vulnerability, at home and elsewhere. Personal, emotionally informed stories of the effects of climate change—such as of children going hungry in climate-worsened drought–can evoke empathy and spur support for greener policies, especially if they arouse anger at injustice. Migration-related narratives, by contrast, can create empathy among some audiences, but can also create fear, especially when migrants are largely presented as members of overestimated crowds.”
#narrativestrategy #issuenarrative
How Movement Organisations Organised Funders
Michelle Mascarenhas, SSIR
Coverage of a roundtable discussion between the founding members of the Climate Justice Alliance and Just Transition Strategic Framework. “The Chorus Foundation worked with climate movement activists to create an ecosystem of allied funders and organisers that could usher in a just transition.” They share their learnings of how to do this, including working carefully to build trusting ‘right relationships’, understanding relationships to power, assessing readiness, and picking a lane within the ecosystem.
#tactics
What If Nobody Is At The Wheel?
Rachel Donald, Planet: Critical
“You can’t bargain with a driverless car. It is so much more difficult to revolt against a system rather than our fellow humans because there is nothing to be in relationship with…The driverless car doesn’t have a goal, doesn’t have a purpose, doesn’t have a nature against which we can take up arms or with which we can negotiate…Its very lack of relationship is what sees it careen blindly towards its own demise, pulling the rest of the world along with it…The cliff is in sight. Aim for the tyres.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
Events
Field Notes: Call For Submissions
Narrative Initiative | Deadline: Dec 22nd
“We are looking for deep dives into organising efforts or arts & cultural initiatives, interviews, and essays, including photo essays…stories that showcase care, resilience, and ingenuity in addressing the biggest issues of today, across three themes – 1) Care is the Antidote to Violence; 2) Surviving Supremacy; 3) democracy, tbd.”
🗓️ Submit here
Moving Mindsets UK
Frameworks | Feb 6th 12.00-13:30 GMT | Online
“Tracking mindsets allows us to see where and how they are moving - and uncover new opportunities for culture change. Tracking mindsets also helps us to measure the impact of social (or narrative) change efforts….The FrameWorks Institute has been tracking mindsets in the US since 2020. They have seen a significant rise in systemic thinking across multiple issues, including racism and the economy. Moving Mindsets will build on this research to develop a UK-specific tracking instrument. We'll use this instrument to track mindsets over time.”
Quotes
(This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications.)
"Part of the reason we're failing is that we ask what is politically possible more than we ask what is necessary." – Julia Barnes
"Pragmatism does not suit environmental crises. Either we will do what is required, or we won’t. There are no half-measures. Rather than asking what’s realistic and then pretending it’s what we need, we should recognise what’s required and then make a plan to make it possible." – Jeff Sparrow
“Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.” – Adrienne Maree Brown
"The problem, it turns out, is not an overabundance of humans but a dearth of humanity. Climate change and the Anthropocene are the triumph of an undead species, a mindless shuffle toward extinction” – Ellie Mae O’Hagan
“Wisdom characterizes any factor that facilitates greater engagement with more of the whole” – Tom Atlee
Thanks for joining us, see you here again in two weeks.
A reminder that if you have something that you’d love to see in these newsletters, or work you’d like to share in the community sessions, or if you have any feedback, please reach out at inter-narratives@greenfunders.org
Very best,
Paddy & Ella