Hi folks,
Two weeks is feeling like a long time currently… We hope you’re finding ways to navigate this moment with care, kindness and attention.
We’re looking forward to our session on ‘Narrative and Wealth Inequality’ next week, and can also now share the recording of our previous event on ‘Hood Futures’.
Below you will also find further reflections on what it might take for us to respond to these times, from starting small and reclaiming hope, to metabolising tensions and building relational infrastructure.
Shared in solidarity
Public session
Narrative and Wealth Inequality
Jean McLean, Jake Hayman, Sarah Kerr, Milly Shotter, Gary Stevenson
Feb 27th | 13:00-14:30 GMT | Online
At a time when the effects of wealth hoarding and inequality are starkly dictating our collective trajectory, this session will explore how we work with narrative and culture to challenge this.
In conversation will be Jean McLean, Interim Convenor (ED) for the Green Economy Coalition, and Board member of Tax Justice UK; Jake Hayman, author of ‘Wealth Unpublished’ and co-founder of the Good Ancestor Movement, Ten Years Time and Impatience Earth; Sarah Kerr from the Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice team at LSE's International Inequalities Institute and author of ‘Wealth, Poverty and Enduring Inequality: Let's talk Wealtherty’; Milly Shotter, author of Risks of Extreme Wealth with Good Ancestor Movement and Patriotic Millionaires; and Gary Stevenson, author of The Trading Game, and the founder and host of the Youtube channel Garys Economics.
Recording
Hood Futures
Infrastructuring as Narrative Reclamation, Service and Self-determination
Amahra Spence was in conversation with Nabil Al-Kinani of Hood Futurist Association. They explored the connections between infrastructure and narrative, a vital element of narrative power which is often overlooked in traditional communications work. The discussion was grounded in the manifesto Privatise the Mandem and its follow up text To Free the Ends, and speculated on a ‘Hood Commons’. Thinking about infrastructures that centre narratives, land and resources as tools for community self-determination and sovereignty, they explored how a robust analysis of class and spatial politics can have practical implications for regenerative hood futures. We were encouraged to “Place emphasis on the documents that create movements”, reflect whether “professionalising of story-telling seems to be the problem”, and to “dance in the space of contradiction.”
🎬 See here
Shares
Key: 📝 Article | ⚙️ Tool | 🎙️ Podcast
The Struggle for Narrative Power in the Time of Audacious Racism
Nikko Viquiera (Race Forward); Just Writing
Quick guidance for an ecosystemic narrative strategy that “advances racial justice and brings people into solidarity with each other.“ Offering three focuses: “1. Keep telling OUR stories; 2. Grow the narrative ecosystem; 3. Stop reinforcing harmful dominant narratives,” with the recognition that “narrative work is long-term work. It requires boundless creativity, courage to experiment with new ways of telling powerful stories of equity and justice, and solidarity, resources and investments in growing the narrative infrastructure, and ecosystem. It requires hope and deep belief in our ability to win and bring about justice and joy in a world that seeks to erase our existence.” We are encouraged to begin “with the seed of a vision for a world where black, brown, queer, and immigrant communities are thriving. Let each of our imaginations be the soil from which this seed grows into reality.”
#narrativestrategy
Reclaiming Hope for Alternative Futures
Jessica Prendergrast; The Onion Collective
You’ve heard of Three Horizons, Two Loops, Icebergs and maybe even MLP, but how about the Petals? This new model provides a timely update to systems change work, recognising that “all these models, without fail, position the radical as outliers – trying to break in – rather than centre-ing them as dominant forces of change, reinforcing their radicalism as oddity.” Responding to the “system-level dismissal or sniggering at those suggesting an alternative,” the model’s creators “wanted to convey emerging and alternative futures practitioners less like oddities or outliers and more like a new beginning at the heart of the model,” recognising that “what we call emergence is not often new at all, but rather being resurfaced or finally noticed by the mainstream.” Maybe “we’ve just been looking in the wrong place, blinded by the light of capitalism”, maybe what we need to replace an economic system “which continues to dominate despite having such an overwhelming and obvious incompatibility with human and planetary survival (let alone social and racial justice)” is already blooming.
#tactics
⚙️ Read here
Reimagining the Cultural Narrative: Art and Storytelling for Systemic Change
Dougald Hine, Nate Hagens; The Great Simplification
The author of At Work in the Ruins and host of The Great Humbling addresses “the importance of narratives in shaping our understanding of the world and how they can help us navigate the complexities of life, especially in the face of ecological crises”, exploring the role that “art and storytelling” need to play “alongside science and data” as we respond to “our collective human predicament.” They touch on the risks of using “art as a communications tool” and “doubling down on the logics of modernity” by clinging to narrowly-rationalist perspectives, and encourage us to consider “four kinds of tasks for an age of endings”. Hine suggests that we already live in “uninhabitable worlds,” – “the ‘future’ is already over, it’s just not evenly distributed yet” – but is encouraged by evidence of “engaged surrender,” “honourable harvests” and people “starting small”. We are left considering what a “12-step programme, where the addiction is on the scale of a whole culture or a whole society” might look like.
#narrativestrategy #deepnarrative
🎙️ Listen here
The Science of Communicating Hope
Thomas Coombes; hope-based communication
“Anger mobilises, hope organises.” Coombes reflects on what neuroscience tells us about focusing on what’s going wrong in our stories, and becoming “more aware of how our biology might be driving our strategy…asking ourselves whether we are motivated by a desire to punish or to heal,” noticing for example that “when we witness kindness, our brain processes it as if someone is being kind to us, which in turn drives us to be kind.” Also, given that our brains are “wired to accept what is familiar… we need to shift our focus from what currently is, to showing what could be. From raising awareness to changing awareness,” which “on the most basic level, means reinforcing the idea that we are all human beings and that this identity should shape policymaking.” Stories are therefore more than just comms, they are a way to “rewire our brains and reshape our communities.”
#insight #messaging #narrativestrategy
There’s No Substitute for Public Opinion
Rachel Kleinfeld; Persuasion
Insights and warnings from the last time a demagogue upended the organs of US democracy unchecked. “What will it take to make the public see Trump’s anti-democratic strategies as wrong, distasteful, and not something they want to associate themselves with?” Kleinfeld suggest two steps, first: “create a ‘vibe’ in which disagreement and dislike can surface in socially acceptable ways. For example: ‘I like Trump but I wish he hadn’t done that.’ Such vibes allow people to feel they won’t be pariahs for their opinions;” and then: “impede a realignment if the Republican Party proves willing to enable widespread anti-democratic actions.” To achieve this, “there is no substitute for a ground game of mass organizing”, as MAGA have proved. “One key lesson is building more fun into such work: a little less MSNBC and spinach, a little more YouTube and funnel cakes.” Ultimately, “if history is any guide, the democracy field needs a vast increase in its communications infrastructure and acumen, from AI and influencers to local connections and camaraderie. And it needs it now.”
#insight #tactics #messaging
'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook
Gil Duran; The Nerd Reich
An overview of fringe theorist – dark enlightenment, neo-reactionary – Curtis Yarvin’s ‘RAGE’ (Retire All Government Employees) and ‘Butterfly Revolution’ ideas, which together form a companion to the Project 2025 strategy. Yarvin calls for a “systematic renewal of America’s institutions”, in which the new regime should “seize all points of power, without respect for paper protections,“ and “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat” to “replace them with our people” — what he calls a “de-woke-ification program,” which, it seems, extends well beyond the government. Duran encourages us to take these people at their word: “we are witnessing the methodical implementation of a long-planned strategy to transform American democracy into corporate autocracy. The playbook was written in plain sight and is now being followed step by step. Some dismiss the Yarvins of the world as unhinged nuts, but that's the point. These guys, with their bizarre and dangerous ideas, have gotten very far in 2025. Just look at the news.”
#insight #tactics
DEI in a Time of Unravelling: the Impossible Task of Mobilising Polarisation
Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, Braider Tumbleweed
A piece co-written with an AI trained in a ‘meta-relational paradigm’, to “scaffold the process of metabolising polarisation – to move between hardened positions, loosen what has become rigid, and compost what no longer serves generative engagement.” They find that “if politics is primarily about securing entitlements for those deemed exceptionally deserving – whether due to ‘merit’ (in right-wing framings) or ‘historical or systemic disadvantage’ (in left-wing framings) – then the political field becomes an ongoing contest over who qualifies for the next distribution of privileges, protections, or reparations.” As this pendulum swings, “coercion breeds reaction. Suppression builds pressure. And every time the pendulum swings back, it does so with greater force, because the unresolved tensions of the previous cycle have only been deferred, not metabolized.” Instead, we are encouraged to “move beyond reaction and into recognition of our own implication in the very dynamics we seek to resist… toward a politics of entanglement… altering the conditions that make such conflicts inevitable.”
#deepnarrative
How to Confront the Beast
Rachel Donald, Robert; Planet: Coordinate
Part three of an investigation into life-serving resistance efforts in Columbia. We are encouraged to recognise the importance of local nuance, as things like ‘economics’ “lose their form when expanded into ideological constructs which blanket nations and discussion, bludgeoning idiosyncrasies into homogenous masses.” So perhaps “effective action can only happen at a small scale, that scaling up will always sacrifice the intimate knowledge from which love springs forth,” and that true freedom “is interdependence, not independence.” They find that “resistance is not merely an oppositional force. And thank god it isn’t, because we are not equal to the states and companies which seek to squeeze everything we have to give. The most important work of resistance happens underground, when we develop the root networks between ourselves that hold the ground steady when power tries to pull us out.”
#tactics
We Are Stronger Than We Think
Maria J. Stephan; Waging Nonviolence
Finding the space to reflect and connect is hard when, “like all autocrats, Trump and his oligarchic henchmen are trying to overwhelm, disorient and distract.” Crucial to resisting their efforts is “reclaiming agency in defining the terrain of struggle away from repressive control and towards individual and community empowerment.” There are many examples of this happening around the world, and one thing is clear from these experiences: “building the relational infrastructure for mass mobilisation and noncooperation is critically important”, because “doubling down on training and organising that is accessible for all parts of society to participate in creative nonviolent action, including mass noncooperation, will build strength, solidarity and harness the energy necessary to not only defeat authoritarianism but to reimagine beloved community for the next generation.”
#insight #tactics
Events, Courses & Jobs
Key: 🗓️ Event | 🎓 Course | 💼 Job
Planetary Civics Inquiry – Launch
Dark Matter Labs, RMIT, Politics For Tomorrow
Feb 26th | Online
“The Planetary Civics Inquiry is an alliance of researchers, educators, policymakers, designers, and practitioners committed to transforming the structures and processes that shape how we govern our entangled planet. In the next 10x100 days, we strive to achieve significant milestones towards planetarity as a frame of action, influencing public policy, creating a governance framework for complex ecosystems, and building a planetary civics alliance for a new knowledge economy and more regenerative futures.”
Facing Human Wrongs: Leading in the Metacrisis
University of Victoria
Deadline: Mar 3rd | First live session: Mar 8th
“A new six-week online course for those looking to expand their leadership capacity in the face of complexity and uncertainty. The metacrisis presents leadership challenges that demand more than conventional expertise — it requires the ability to: Act with clarity amidst volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA); Sit with discomfort without giving up or tuning out; Maintain a learning stance; and Engage holistically with what is in front of us. This course is an invitation to reimagine leadership in the metacrisis, moving from the narrow concept of “leader” as a noun – an expert with all the answers – to the wider concept of leading as a practice.”
How Do We Build Grassroots Narrative Power in the UK?
PIRC
Apr 9th | 12:30-14:00 GMT | Online
“How can we build communities of learning, growth and care, focused on narrative change? This is the question we set out to ask at the start of Building Our Narrative Power (BONP) - our year-long narrative leadership programme. We’ve been led by 14 participants and a bunch of amazing facilitators, and we're drawing to a close in February 2025. With help from our participants, co-facilitators and external evaluators Liverpool World Centre, we've been taking notes. And we want to share our learnings with you. Whether you're thinking about running your own residential, narrative change skillshare, year-long programme, or community event, we feel our learnings can provide some insight into what to consider.”
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.)
“Hope is a discipline. We should not have a passive relation to hope, but we should be generating and creating hope — that’s the work of activists. We have to believe that a different world is possible.” – Angela Davis
"The function of power is to tell you a story about the world. Real power is taking reality and shaping it." – Adam Curtis
"The loss of the underlying aesthetic unity was an epistemological mistake." – Gregory Bateson
“There are things we must do, sayings we must say, thoughts we must think, that look nothing like the images of success that have so thoroughly possessed our visions of justice.” – Báyò Akómoláfé
“Dominant paradigms dominate only until they don’t anymore. Eventually they give way, either gently or in turbulence, to something else.” – Jessica Prendergrast
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