Newsletter #25
Election | Wealth | Multipolar
Hi folks,
We hope you’re finding your feet amid the election fray.
For the next few editions of this newsletter we’ll include a dedicated ‘Election’ section, to share insight and strategy in the interest of coordinating towards a just and regenerative outcome.
This week we have the recording of our recent Public session, curated by Bridgit Antoinette Evans of Pop Culture Collaborative, with Nayantara Sen of the Centre for Story-Based Strategy from the US. It was a helpfully practical session, and we include links to the tool and approach they shared.
This marks the end of our first cycle of curated sessions. You can find the recordings of all six sessions here. We’ve been delighted with the broad and diverse perspectives that our curators have brought, and we hope you have too. Thank you to everyone who has come along, or watched back since – we hope you have found them illuminating, instructive, and inspiring. We’ll keep you posted about dates for the next round, which will begin in the summer.
Shared in solidarity
Session recording
Transforming Narrative Oceans Through Narrative Systems Design
Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Nayantara Sen
“Achieving a just future in which the majority of people are engaged in building pluralist culture requires transforming the toxic narrative oceans in which we swim.” In this session we were introduced to the powerful, responsive narrative framework and strategy that helps Pop Culture Collaborative do just that, underpinning their impactful grantmaking and field organising in the US. Accompanied by case studies and a practical exercise (not recorded), we were left with a robust, practical approach to assessing and developing narrative change interventions. See a link to the recording below, along with a link to the Narrative System framework, and a set of related articles.
⚙️ Framework
📝 Articles
🗳️ Election 🗳️
Key: ⚙️ Tool | 📋 Report
Getting the Story Right
Climate Outreach
A quick overview of four data-backed principles for communicating about climate in the lead-up to the election. Which are: “1) Climate leadership is a vote-winner. People expect the next government to crack on and invest; 2) Caring about climate and nature is normal. Most people do.; 3) Climate action is happening everywhere and it’s great news. Make it feel real to people.; 4) Empathise. Times are tough and some people are worried about potential costs. It’s the government’s job to make the transition fair and exciting.” In short: show climate action is “Normal; Joined Up; Possible; and Common sense.” Download the guide for data and practical steps. Also see links to briefings in our ‘Events’ section below; their latest guide on Trust and Influence; and questions about the latest iteration of Britain Talks Climate.
#insight #narrativestrategy
⚙️ See here
Behind the Voting Intention
More In Common
“Based on deep dive polling of voter priorities and testing of ‘mock manifestos’, the report looks at what the most important voter groups want to hear during the election campaign - including the ‘Don’t Knows’, voters who have switched from Conservative to Labour, and those who are backing Reform UK. The report dives deep into the nuances of the views held by the British public that might not be captured through headline voting intention and dives deep into the eight key groups that will shape the outcome of the next general election.”
#insight
📋 Read here (shared in Newsletter #22)
Info hub
Climate Justice Coalition
A one-stop shop for climate justice campaigns and networks. “On this page, you’ll find campaigns, actions and resources from across our movement to help you navigate the issues in the upcoming election, advocate for climate justice and make sure your voice is heard on polling day.”
#narrativestrategy #tactics
⚙️ See here
And in case you need some encouragement / light relief, see Juice Media’s take on The state of Democracy™.
Shares
Key: 🎬 Film | 📝 Article | 📋 Report
Good Enough Ancestor
RadicalxChange
A trailer for Cynthia Wade and Teri Whitcraft’s upcoming film, which “tells the story of Taiwan’s 1st Digital Minister and the world’s 1st trans minister Audrey Tang and how she took Taiwan from an occupation of their national legislature to being the world’s most respected digital democracy. Overcoming bullying, a fatal heart condition and gender dysphoria, Tang has emerged as the world’s most effective leader of nonviolent resistance to authoritarianism. Glimpse her story here and learn more about how she did it all in her new book.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎬 See here
New Economic Schools Of Thought: A Concise Overview
Renilde Becqué
A quick reference guide to 14 new economic models, providing “initial insight and context regarding the history, main goal(s), prime constituencies, key messages, and high level challenges of different lines of new economic thinking that can be found in the field today and which can be a source of confusion when we talk about economic transformation.”
#issuenarrative #tactics
Resourcing revolutionary Narrative and Cultural strategies
Chiara K. Cattaneo; Alliance
Concise guidance for philanthropists, acknowledging the emergent, trans-generational, collective and liminal nature of narrative and culture change. “To truly unlock the transformative potential of these strategies, funders must collaborate beyond traditional boundaries. They should take cues from creatives, strategists, and grassroots organisers, and support experimental approaches… What if we choose to collectively nurture each other in this liminal space and find ways to move through it together?”
#narrativestrategy
Endowing The Future
Civic Square, Dark Matter Labs
“A call to philanthropy to meet the moment, endowing its resources, possibilities, assets and imagination not only to avert the worst of current trajectories, but to seed just, regenerative, and distributive futures that can invite the wisdom, creativity, energy and drive of us all.” A rigorous rallying cry for the “endowment of neighbourhoods as part of a multi-capital approach to unlock and discover the capacities, capabilities and knowledges required for the people who live there to co-lead a courageous, bold and urgent transition, held in common.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
What’s Race Got To Do With It?
Union Of Justice
“This groundbreaking research project, the result of extensive efforts, illuminates the profound disparities faced by communities of colour in Western Europe amidst the climate crisis. Titled ‘What’s Race Got To Do With It? Climate Injustice in Europe Uncovered’, this comprehensive study, for the first time ever, offers a sobering glimpse into the intersection of the climate crisis and racial inequality with peer-reviewed academic research… across ten countries… finding evidence of Systemic Inequities, Exclusion and Stigmatisation, and Policy Failures.”
#insight
Healing Wealth
Kosmos Journal
The introduction to a collection of pieces, guest edited by Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy. “Healing wealth is a process, not an endpoint. It requires shifts in our perceptions and ways of living beyond the binaries of the individual versus the superstructures… In order to address our current meta-crisis, the interlocking and cascading crises resulting from the logic of modernity and late-stage capitalism, will require deeper notions of restoration and living in right relations, cultural transformation, the co-creation of life-affirming structures and regenerative infrastructures... For this task, there is no distinction between inner versus outer work nor spiritual versus political work. We are fractal manifestations of a nested whole.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
Events
Getting the Climate Election Story Right
Climate Outreach | 11 Jun 12:00-13:00 BST | 18 Jun 17:00-18:00
“This webinar will discuss two election guides from Climate Outreach: Getting the climate story right: General Election 2024; and Talking Climate on the Doorstep. We’ll be joined by a panel of climate communication experts to take your questions about how to cut through the noise with a brilliant story at election time.”
Next Frontiers 2024: Wealth, Funding and Investment Practice
JRF | June 13th | 08:30-17:00 BST | London & Online
“The Next Frontiers conference 2024 invites people from across the finance ecosystem to explore transformative approaches to wealth management and redistribution, philanthropy, and investment.” Curated by Vicki Purewal and Ashanti Kunene.
Power & Prosperity in a Multipolar World
Progressive International, Phenomenal World, Transforma UNICAMP | June 20th | Brazil & Online
“Leading scholars, activists, and political representatives from across the world will meet at the University of Campinas in the Brazilian state of São Paulo for a festival of ideas on the future of the international order.”
🗓️ See here
Quotes
(This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications.)
“It is not about right or left / It is about the depth that is stored in the roots” – Azul Duque
“Political power pools in bellies of laughter where the strongman’s grip cannot reach.” –
"The opposite of our current predicament—climate collapse, social unrest, extinction, mass migrations, solastalgia, genocide—is, in fact, the disintegration of opposites altogether... Everything is both. And more. And everything is penetratingly, painfully, wildly alive." –
"We don’t have a right to ask whether we are going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what’s the right thing to do? What does this Earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?" – Wendell Berry
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” – Bell Hooks
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