Newsletter #36
Liberation stories | Dark matter | Social soil
Hi everyone,
Sending strength and resolve this week to all those recovering from COP29, impacted by its outcome, or suffering from the recent devastating flooding around the world.
For those who were unable to make our Collective Intelligence Session, processing the implications of the US election for narrative work, we’re sharing our structure here in case it is useful. We began with written reflection borrowed from Staci Haines:
How are you feeling about the election result today?
Where/ what/ who are you worried for?
Who are you making meaning with? Who are you getting closer to? Are you seeing any glimmers?
Who are you turning to for strategy? And vision?
And then split into groups to explore (1) What are the learnings for you from Trump’s victory? (2) What then does this mean for your work, including theories of change, long-term strategy etc. What to stop, what to pivot, what to continue…?
Shared in solidarity
Shares
Key: 📗 Book | 📝 Article | ⚙️ Tool | 🎙️ Podcast | 🎬 Film
Liberation Stories
Shanelle Matthews, Marzena Zukowska, RadComms; The New Press
“Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements” – a gathering of “some of today’s leading progressive and radical grassroots communicators, organisers, artists, visual storytellers, journalists, and academics combine their collective wisdom into a single volume. Featuring in-depth case studies of contemporary social justice movements and historical examples for understanding and challenging the dominant narratives across the globe, Liberation Stories distills successful theories, strategies, and tactics for anyone wanting to understand – and participate in – the diverse initiatives currently shaping our society. At a time when right-wing movements are on the rise globally – attacking our books, our bodies, and our systems of government – Liberation Stories offers a comprehensive tool for building the world we want.” Available summer 2025.
#narrativestrategy #tactics
📗 See here
The Charity Sector Has an Anti-Palestinian Racism Problem
Charity So White
“As we continue to see heartbreaking and harrowing images of death and destruction coming out of Gaza, so called ‘neutrality’ is no longer a credible option for charity leaders. Staying quiet in the face of genocide means normalising it, and charities are failing their charitable missions by not standing with the people of Palestine… 81% of staff reported that they are dissatisfied with their organisation’s response (or lack thereof) to Gaza. With a staggering 50% of staff saying they are “extremely disappointed” with their organisation’s handling of the situation in Gaza… The charity sector must ask itself honestly - does it see Palestinians as human beings and is it concerned about their suffering? The people who responded to our survey are the future of the sector, and it is time for the leaders of our charities to stand alongside them and with the people of Palestine.”
#insight #issuenarrative #deepnarrative
COP29 Wasn’t About Climate
Fadhel Kaboub; Global South Perspectives
“It was about an economic and geopolitical hierarchy that is not supposed to be disturbed… The Global North knows very well that real transformative climate finance will actually unleash a tremendous development potential in the Global South, and that will disrupt the global economic and geopolitical hierarchy, which is unacceptable for the Global North. That is the bottom line. It's a colonial mentality dressed up in greenwashed diplomatic violence… The Global South recognises that we need to create a geopolitical leverage to pressure the historic polluters to act differently…(it) is not asking for charity and is not playing the victim. We are demanding payments for a legitimate climate debt… We are the global majority. We can leverage the complementarity of our resources and capabilities to impose a new international economic order of justice, peace, and prosperity.” A strategy will follow; see a quick video explanation of the ‘Bargain of the Century’ at the end in the meantime. Also see.
#insight #issuenarrative #deepnarrative
The Liberal Model is Blocking Real Climate Action
Sibo Chen (re: Christopher Shaw); LSE Book Review
“Christopher Shaw offers a compelling critique of the prevailing liberal narratives regarding climate change”, which “frequently obstruct the development of more radical, transformative responses that are essential for resolving the current policy gridlock on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.“ He focuses on ‘five liberal climate guardrails’, which “construct a future that is politically, morally, and economically exactly the same as the life-destroying liberalism of today”. These are: “1. Climate change is not a challenge to individualism; 2. The liberal construction of climate change is universally true; 3. Climate change is not a historical phenomenon; 4. We have technologies to solve climate change; 5. New stories will save us.” Overall he “makes a strong case that it is imperative to engage in public discourse regarding the prospects of liberalism to help us navigate the intricacies of climate action in a manner that promotes sustainability, justice, and equity.”
#narrativestrategy #tactics
The Starkest Collapse Prognosis I’ve Heard
Indy Johar, Sarah Wilson; Wild
An exploration of how the untreated root cause of our predicament – “the nature of how we relate to the planet and theorise value” – is presenting a “fork in the road.” Johar warns that it is now our ‘duty‘ to avoid self-terminating runaway collapse, in favour of difficult-but-viable ‘slingshot economics’ pathways. He proposes the need for a profound transformation in orientation, from ‘bio-degradable’ to ‘bio-nutritious’; ‘power over’ to ‘care with’; towards ‘poly-infrastructure’ with ‘self sovereignty’; whilst recognising that there is no ‘other’: “we're all implicated, and in that the only obligation is to move together.” For Johar, ‘re-animification’ or ‘re-agentification’ – recognising the vital agency of the rest of nature – is how we can handle otherwise-overwhelming complexity, an evolutionary hack we have lost but must retrieve now. He calls all of us, in whatever work we do, to be paying close attention to the ‘dark matter’ that underpins our societies, and “expanding what it means to be human” to resist the terminal devaluing of the human by modern economics.
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎙️ Listen here
An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech
Otto Scharmer; Field of the Future
“For social systems to truly change we need to upgrade their underlying operating systems, that is, we need to cultivate not only what is growing ‘above the ground’, but also the conditions of social soil”, which are “the less visible inner conditions, what is beneath the surface, the quality of awareness (attention and intentions) and the quality of relationships that affect how we operate.” Scharmer argues for a “shift toward building collective capacity for bottom-up cross-sector innovation and transformation across places and regions... Leaning into, sensing, and actualising the emerging future” in a way that is “independent of” traditional politics. We’re all aware that in a world of “polarisation and absencing”, it’s hard to “hold the space for the activation of an entire ecosystem,” but Scharmer urges us to try, proposing three upgrades, seven practices, and three pathways to “cultivate the social soil” that he’ll explore further in later posts.
#narrativestrategy #issuenarrative #tactics
To Give Up This World, To Have Many Others
Ailton Krenak, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Amilcar Packer; Arika
Part of Arika’s recent Episode 11 in Glasgow, ‘To End The World As We Know It’, this is a recording of a conversation on “the notion of pluriverses, and plural worldviews and life ways, unpicking the colonial imposition of linear time or teleology and the fixation on historical continuity.” In which the artists discuss “Western society as being obsessed with merchandise, and the extent to which this has collapsed into the subject and the body, and what it means to invent a poetics capable of freeing us from the desire for merchandise,” exploring ways that “organisms, human and non-human, recognize their distinct poetics of life” and “how these work against capitalism and fascism, as a denunciation of political alliances, and maybe even of ‘politics’.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎬 See here
Intergenerational Responsibility and Composting Our W.E.I.R.D S**t
Vanessa Andreotti, Dan Burgess; Spaceship Earth Podcast
An exploration of “sitting with the shit”, as “Western Entitled Individualistic Reductionist and Delusional people,” encouraging an “opening up to the uncomfortable grief,” and a recognition that ‘composting’ is how we prepare the ground for something new. As Burgess describes “this is really a conversation about unlearning and learning in new ways,” and about how might we shift our orientation from “entitlement to more entitlements” to “responsibility to more responsibility,” in a way that is “centred in our entanglement with a living Earth.” Called to “absolutely reject colonial divisiveness, violence and the othering of some humans…to stand up for all life…and to see all life as sacred again,” we are offered a question to hold: “What if we could respond from a space of emotional sobriety, relational maturity, intellectual discernment, and intergenerational responsibility? What would we be doing? How would we be spending our time?”
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎙️ Listen here
9 Dimensions for Evaluating How Art and Creative Practice Stimulate Societal Transformations
Various authors; Ecology & Society
“There is an urgent need to engage with deep leverage points in sustainability transformations – fundamental myths, paradigms, and systems of meaning making – to open new collective horizons for action. Art and creative practice are uniquely suited to help facilitate change in these deeper transformational leverage points. However, understandings of how creative practices contribute to sustainability transformations are lacking in practice and fragmented across theory and research”. The paper presents the ‘9 Dimensions Tool’, which “consists of three categories of change, and nine dimensions: changing meanings (embodying, learning, and imagining); changing connections (caring, organising, and inspiring); and changing power (co-creating, empowering, and subverting).” Includes analysis of its practical application across 20 projects.
#narrativestrategy #tactics
⚙️ Read here
Events, Courses & Jobs
Key: 💼 Job | 🗓️ Event
Climate Storytelling Consultant
Heard
Deadline: Nov 29th | Contractor, Hybrid | ASAP – May 31st
“We’re looking for an experienced TV Producer to help lead our work in the TV industry. We have received additional funding to expand our exciting climate programme, supporting broadcasters and producers, commissioners and development teams, in proactively seeking out climate stories and framing them in ways that lead to change.”
Decolonial Feminist Organisational Development And Facilitation Partner Consultancy
Oxfam International
Deadline: Nov 29th
“The primary objective of this consultancy is to support Oxfam in beginning a transformative feminist organisational change process grounded in decolonial feminist approaches. This initial phase will lay the foundation for long-term change by embedding and cultivating practices that counter colonial, patriarchal, and hierarchical practices and structures while prioritising shared feminist leadership, inclusion and equity… Component 1 focuses on assessing Oxfam’s organisational culture and structure and developing a decolonial feminist narrative that articulates a vision for transformation for the confederation. This narrative will serve as the guiding framework for the Action Plan that will be developed in Component 2 by the Decolonial Feminist Collective. The collective’s work, informed by this foundational narrative, will further drive Oxfam’s transformation, aligning practices with our decolonial feminist vision.”
We Can’t Get There From Here: Carbon, Climate and the Call to Wonder
Paul Hawken, Báyò Akómoláfé; Schumacher Centre For New Economics
Dec 4th | Online
“For Paul and Báyò, the belief that with good intentions, supreme effort, institutional coherence, and philanthropic benevolence, we could move from ‘here’ to ‘there’, obscures too much. Leaves out too much. It misses how ‘here’ is already a postponement of ‘there’. It misses the wonder along the way, the idea that these times aren’t asking us to travel from ‘here’ to ‘there’, but from ‘here’ to here. A call to wonder is a call to get lost, to lose our way... Join us as Paul and Báyò investigate through conversation an errant world that flows beyond the solutionism and imaginaries of justice that have incarcerated our organized responses to climate loss.”
Signal in the Noise - Trends in the UK climate discourse in 2023/24
Climate Barometer, Act Climate Labs
Dec 11th | Online
“Signal in the Noise is a new publication that tracks trends in public opinion. Led by Climate Barometer, and in collaboration with ACT Climate Labs, these trends are set against the evolution of online narratives. This online event will feature speakers from Climate Barometer capturing the past ‘15 months in 15 minutes’ plus discussion and analysis from ACT Climate Labs, and more guests TBC.”
Quotes
This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications. See a full list of all the previous quotes.
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” – Margaret Wheatley
“They offer crumbs while we bear the dead. Outrageous, evil and remorseless.” – Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama lead negotiator, COP29
“When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order.” – Ilya Prigogine
“Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify.” – Iris Murdoch
“Culture is ordinary; that is where we must start.” – Raymond Williams
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