Hi friends,
This is our last newsletter of 2023, coming to you slightly earlier in the week than normal before we all disperse.
Before you go, we’re hoping you might spare a few minutes, pop on some seasonal tunes, make a cup of tea and answer a quick survey (yay) about Inter-Narratives. This will really help us make sure we’re meeting your narrative needs in 2024. Thank you in advance, and thank you for all your attention and care this year.
We look forward to seeing you again in January, when we’ll be running a Public Event with Amahra Spence and special guests (25th, see below).
We imagine many of you are feeling the co-existence of very different emotions, as we enter into the holiday season at a time when great suffering and injustice is so visible. We hope that the diversity of these emotions forms a crucible for new feelings, insight and action that will feed your work for the world in 2024.
Wishing you a restorative break.
Shared in solidarity.
Session
On Black Imagination and Liberation Rehearsal
Amahra Spence & special guests (TBC) | Jan 25th | Online
Exploring Black imagination, fugitivity, liberation rehearsal and ancestral intelligence. More details will follow in January.
Shares
Key: ⚙️ Tool | 📋 Report | 📝 Article | 🎙️ Podcast
How Do We Know If We’ve Transformed Narrative Oceans?
Pop Culture Collaborative, USC Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project
The outcome of an enquiry seeking to design “a useable, multi-pronged evaluation framework for field members and funders in the pop culture narrative change field to track, learn from, and evaluate progress in the work to transform narrative oceans, in our quest to creating a just and pluralist culture.” The result is a new beta framework: INCITE — Inspiring Narrative Change Innovation through Tracking and Evaluation.
#narrativestrategy
⚙️ Read here
Climate Barometer
Adam Corner, Susie Wang, Niall McLoughlin
“Climate Barometer makes sense of what people think about climate change... We curate the latest insights, provide data-driven perspectives, and run a climate opinion tracker with the UK public and MPs. An informed and responsive understanding of public and political opinion is crucial – for the climate movement, for journalists reporting on unfolding events, or for politicians who need a clear brief, fast…(but) data is scattered, so the story can be difficult to follow. Climate Barometer provides a signal in the noise, curating timely insights on what people think about climate change.”
#issuenarrative #insight
⚙️ See here
The Gift Contract
Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (2021)
“The usual story of change is that there is a problem with the system that needs to be solved… Our analysis has a different starting point. It begins with an examination of how violence and unsustainability are conditions that are necessary for the system (that is ‘not working’) to exist, how we are part of this system (and complicit in harm) and how this system has screwed (all of) us up… Without this cognitive, affective and relational ‘decluttering’, we will only be able to want and imagine different versions of the same thing… We need to interrupt the cycle of vilification/pathologization and romanticization/idealization… There is a mega-storm coming, and our only option is to go through it, together.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
⚙️ Read here
AI: Systems of Intentionality & Human-Centred Values
Nishant Shah with Fangyu Qing and Longhan Wei, Digital Narratives
The first output from new Hong Kong based effort Digital Narratives Studio: “a collaborative, iterative, and provocative space to research, produce, and amplify the possibilities of hopeful action through narrative change.” The report argues “the need for reimagining current paradigms of AI proliferation stems from the opaque and alienating practices conducted in and by these systems, that need an urgent unpacking to make our bodies, relations and futures safer and more transparent.”
#narrativestrategy
Reframing the National Security Narrative
Othering & Belonging Institute, Women Of Color Advancing Peace and Security, Narrative Initiative, Open Society-US
“Our public discourse is seeded with dangerous and counterproductive ideas concerning national security that are so deeply embedded we may often be unaware that we, as storytellers, are invoking or reinforcing them in our own narrations...” The principles aim to “equip audiences to envision a different reality, organised around the health and thriving of our human communities and natural world. In particular, we hope to call out and eradicate narratives that sow human division and weaponise fear.”
#narrativestrategy
Colonial Rule Nearly Doubles UK’s Historical Contribution to Climate Change
Carbon Brief
New analysis increases the UK’s share of cumulative historical emissions from 3% up to 5.1%. This jumps the UK from eighth to fourth place in the global rankings of countries’ “historical responsibility for climate change”, still behind the US, China, and Russia, but now ahead of India, Brazil and Germany. “Moreover, the UK’s population are the second-highest emitters on a per-capita basis, when accounting for emissions under colonial rule.”
#issuenarrative #insight
How One Community Approached Collective Healing After a Disastrous Wildfire
Gen Dread, Dr. Adrienne Heinz
“Trauma-informed care…starts with not ‘what's wrong with you’, but ‘what happened to you’… What doesn't quite resonate is this idea of, ‘I need to rest and do self care…in service of being more productive at work, more engaged as a parent, or getting more done at home’...versus resting to just, like, restore your soul… You have the right to rest because you're a human being. The end.”
#messaging #tactics
Dismantling Destructive Narratives
Yuria Celidwen, Holding The Fire: Indigenous Voices On The Great Unravelling
Dr. Celidwen’s work combines Indigenous studies, cultural psychology, and contemplative science. In this episode they “explore indigenous values, the challenges of pursuing education within colonial systems, and the need to find like-minded individuals for positive change. They emphasise the importance of principles like reverence, responsibility, and self-examination to restore balance in the face of colonialism and capitalism...and highlight the importance of epistemological equity and ecological belonging,” all grounded in “commitment and community”.
#deepnarrative #narrativestrategy
🎙️ Listen here
Capitalism
Scene On Radio, Imperative 21
The Scene On Radio podcast hosted by John Biewen (previous seasons include Seeing White), is turning its lens on “the inescapable knot at the heart of it all” in a new Season being produced in partnership with BLab’s Imperative 21, who introduce it here in their updated website. “With the help of expert voices, (we) will go back to explore how capitalism emerged and transformed over centuries, how people with power shaped it the way they did, what was both gained and lost along the way, and where we can go from here.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎙️ See here (launching spring ‘24)
Jobs and Courses
Key: 💼 Job | 🎓 Course
Communications Manager Role
Act Build Change | Deadline Jan 11th
“Act Build Change is in a moment of growth. We are a small start-up achieving a lot with a little. There is a significant demand for our work and we aim to grow in a sustainable way, ensuring the quality of our work is never compromised by the quantity of requests. We want someone who is brilliant at communicating to expand our reach, strengthen the relationships we have and take our organisation to the next level.”
Non-exec Director Roles
Common Cause Foundation
“Common Cause Foundation is looking for new non-executive directors to help us champion and reflect the human values that underpin our care for one another and our living planet… Positions on the board are voluntary – under the terms of our constitution, we are unable to pay non-executive directors for their time. However, expenses will be met – including, for example, to meet caring responsibilities while working with us. Non-executive directors are asked to remain in post for two-to-three years, after which they will be invited either to step down or re-enlist for a second term.”
Project Tipping Point
(re)Biz
“We are creating tipping points that fracture business-as-usual thinking within its infinite growth paradigm, mechanistic and reductionistic methods, techno-solutionist approaches riddled with hubris and greenwashing & myopic, disconnected narratives that are lacking contextual and collective relevance…(in) a pioneering self-paced journey, community and movement.” They are also offering discount coupons: Launch65 - 65% off (first 250 people); 2wave50 - 50% off (second 250 people).
Quotes
(This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications)
“As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).”
From the poem, ‘Think of Others’ – Mahmoud Darwish
"The polycrisis, and the convergence of crises in the collapse that we are learning about and experiencing—that crisis happened a long time ago. We've been saying this for centuries. We did it again and again and again, kept brutalising each other, kept brutalising the Earth, and the Earth can only take so much. The fact that she's even lasted this long is incredible, with the amount of brutality and the amount of abuse, but she's very resilient. But only to a certain point. We can't go on like this." – Lyla June Johnston
“The polycrisis is not a cognitive problem, it is a relational and effective problem.” – Azul Duque
“Dignity is a word that has the capacity to cut through all the floors of society, from the very top where the big deals are done to the very bottom where the tea-man sits with drooping shoulders. That is why in today’s world, in which our system is in its last act, the word might have the power to gather people to build a better life.”
– Ece Temelkuran
“My mind is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic. Whatever the situation, I imagine the worst that could happen in order to summon up all my reserves and will power to overcome every obstacle." – Antonio Gramsci
Thanks for joining us, see you here again in 2024!
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