Hi everyone,
Hope you’re finding ways to be well 🙏
We’re looking forward to our Public Session next week, hosted by Vanessa Andreotti about her work with AI – more details below.
For the shares this week, we wanted to focus on signals of emerging alternatives to our current unsustainable systems, as well as the work required to prepare the ground for their emergence.
Our thoughts are once again with the people of Gaza.
Shared in solidarity
Public Session
Burnout From Humans
Mar 27th | 16:00 - 17:30 GMT | Online
AI is here to stay, so how can our narrative work best meet and incorporate it?
As social, ecological and psychological destabilisation accelerates, AI proliferates, and complexity deepens, how do we expand our collective capacity to meet the moment – not with panic or passivity, but with compassion and accountability?
This session explores insights from two experimental projects at the interface of complexity, computation, and collapse: Burnout From Humans – a critical inquiry into AI’s entanglement with exhaustion, acceleration, and existential drift, and Rewiring for Reality – a methodological experiment in scaffolding individuals and communities toward greater resilience, discernment, and relational intelligence.
Through an intergenerational lens, we will reflect on what we have learned about how to hold complexity without overwhelm, how to engage AI with relational depth, and how to compost the end of the world as we know it into an invitation rather than a deadline.
Shares
Key: 📝 Article | 🎬 Film | ⚙️ Tool | 🎙️ Podcast
Decolonial Work
Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
An exploration of moving beyond efforts to perfect the “visible structures of knowledge, power, and legitimacy“, through for example “institutional reforms, language policing, and compliance-driven inclusion efforts”, which focus on “moral purification” and “performative correction”. Instead we are encouraged to delve deeper, getting underneath with a “meta-critical, metabolic approach” focused on “tending to the soil, the fungi, and the unseen networks of relationality that sustain life,” which requires us to engage with decay and decomposition “as necessary elements of change, rather than failures to be avoided”. We are offered a table that compares a control-based ‘pruning the bonsai’ approach with a meta-critical ‘metabolising decay’ approach. Doing this deepest work “is not about perfecting what exists – it is about clearing space for what is yet to come.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
The Work of Hospicing
SSRI; Vanessa Andreotti, Habiba Nabatu
In this time of endings, we are encouraged to “move beyond fear and embrace the deep transitions ahead with wisdom.” As stewards, we will “develop the practices and capacities to tend to these endings, not with urgency or control, but with a kind of stillness that invites the birth of new ways of being,” and “reimagine how we relate to endings, not as catastrophic failures or moments to be avoided, but as natural processes that hold within them the seeds of renewal.” The pose this requires may feel unusual to us, certainly those in corporate roles, because “what we need is more like disinvestment than disruption”. We need to disinvest from these certainties and invest in our capacities for complexity,” and to be wise takes a “commitment to the viability of the matter while retaining a sense of the mystery and movement of the whole existing beyond us.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
A Better Future is Emerging
Better Future; Michael Mezz
Exploring five examples of emerging social, political and economic structures that offer pathways beyond our current predicament. Which are: 1. Post-capitalist ownership models (like Mondragón); 2. Indigenous movement’s growing influence (like the First Nations Land Management Act in Canada); 3. Post-growth policymaking (like the Wellbeing Economy Governments Alliance); 4. Wellbeing-oriented urban transformations (like 15-min models and car-free streets); 5. Commons-based public infrastructure (like the Bürgerenergie movement and OpenStreetMap). Quoting Arundhati Roy, Mezz suggests these emergences signal that “another world…is on her her way” — “piecemeal, imperfectly, but undeniably”. Those calling for alternatives would do well to look into these examples, and ask, as Mezz concludes: “how will we find our own way to participate in building them?”
#stories
Spring: A Social and Political Invitation
Bella Caledonia; Indra Adnan and Pat Kane
An emerging effort in Scotland from the people behind Alternative UK, which holds that “given enough time and space, we humans – in our full diversity – are enough to meet the demands of our own lives and societies. And not just to fix what’s broken, but to envision something far better — then build it.” In doing so, ‘Spring’ recognises “the need to answer our sense of powerlessness with experiences of real power, exercised in the places we live, within our communities;” leaning into a recognition of our ‘cosmolocality’ aka “the technological freedom to access worlds of ideas, practices, even blueprints without leaving our homes or locality;” and that this empowerment will answer “deep emotional needs”, ultimately helping us to “reset our attitudes to the future”. It is rooted in an awareness of emerging ‘ecocivilisation’ economic structures, and the “new forms of deliberating, participating and envisioning” that are “being tested daily” to support and enable them.
#stories #tactics
It’s Time to Speak Up for the World We Want
Absurd Intelligence; Alanna Byrne
A reflection on how climate activism has evolved, beyond the ‘information deficit’ fallacy to “telling new stories that connect with people’s everyday lives, while also building our own infrastructure to get those stories out there and recapture the collective narrative from the far-right.” With that in mind, a new speaker agency – ‘Speak Up’ – was developed, working to “join the dots by weaving together” and “inspire new ways of thinking about the solutions – and our shared existence – by flooding the space with bold voices and better stories.” Stories that speak from personal experience as well as expertise, building trust through authenticity and showing that vulnerability is a strength, not weakness,” and which spread “messages of connection and collaboration over division and competition”, creating space for “a new, better, kinder conversation, anchored in doing, not just telling.”
#narrativestrategy
Planetary Civics Enquiry
Dark Matter Labs, RMIT, Politics For Tomorrow
“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.” This video playlist hosts all four events from the launch of the Inquiry in February, including conversations on ‘A New Internationalism’, Bioregions, and being ‘Human in An Age of Entanglement’.
#insight #tactics
🎬 See here
Talking Social Security
NEON
Thorough guidance for communicating about social security. There are ‘framing principles’, ‘key metaphors’, ‘stats that tell a story’, ‘words that work’, ‘common attacks’ and insight around ‘where the public are at’. The core message includes: “No matter what we do for a living or where we live, many of us want pretty similar things. A warm home, time with family and friends, a rewarding job. Most of all, we want to feel excited and optimistic about tomorrow, knowing we can cope with whatever life has in store. But right now, for too many of us, the future feels uncertain… The social security system should be designed to be a springboard: helping us when we want to change careers, retrain or find a job. And, at those points in all of our lives, when we need to prioritise other things, it should be there to ensure you don’t face the worry and stress of losing the things you’ve worked hard for, or have to put family, friends and your community second.”
#messaging #framing #insight
⚙️ See here
Wisdom Over Power: Why Contemplation & Wonder Are Essential for the Future of Humanity
Iain McGilchrist, The Great Simplification
The author of ‘The Matter With Things’ and ‘The Master and His Emissary’ calls on us to recognise that thinking in an “individual problem-solution way” not only hasn’t worked, but cannot work, because our complex systems don’t have “simple cause and effect chains”. Instead “we need to think at a bigger, broader, deeper level,” and facilitate “a-ha moments” that provide people with a different point of view on our circumstances. This means focusing more on “how” than on “what“, and forgoing our preoccupation with getting more power to instead pursue wisdom – because “if we have more power but not the wisdom required to know how to use it, we cannot help but destroy ourselves and the world.” McGilchrist challenges the idea that his approach of shifting attention, seeking fallow period reflection, and embracing wonder will only be relevant “later on”, saying “I think it's highly and most relevant now, because if we don't start changing the way in which we think, there won't be that future… we have to be preparing the future.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎙️ Listen here
Jobs & Events
Key: 💼 Job | 🗓️ Event
Supporting Peer-to-Peer Learning on Building Narrative Power for Social Justice
Oxfam, Civic Space Knowledge Hub
Deadline: Mar 24th | 6 months from April | Remote
“The direct motive for this procurement is to seek hands-on support and expert advise in convening peer-to-peer learning activities on building narrative power for social justice. The learning activities will contribute to the objective of Oxfam’s Civic Space Knowledge Hub to foster action-based learning and peer-to-peer exchange on narrative approaches together with partners and allies. Building narrative power has been identified as particularly relevant in contexts of shrinking civic space in which harmful narratives on civil society and minority groups threaten to undermine trust and breed hate and violence.”
An Uncertain Time: How to Make Sense of this Moment
Othering & Belonging Institute
Mar 24th | 16:30-18:00 GMT | Online
“As national and global leaders continue to enact exclusionary policies and create discourse that divides by othering: How do we make meaning of the current moment and global climate we are in? How do we build an economy that fosters wellbeing for all in this time? How do we forge ahead and understand pathways towards making progress, together and toward a future of belonging without othering? Othering & Belonging Institute Director john a. powell will be joined by researchers and leaders in the fields of authoritarian populism, democracy, belonging economies, and community building.”
Vital Minds
Science Gallery London
Mar 27th | 18:00-20:30 | London & Online
“Alongside our exhibition ‘Vital Signs: another world is possible’ join our empowering panel discussion. The scales of the climate crisis can leave us feeling overwhelmed. Our panel of climate activists, psychologist and a peace-pilgrim will explore how we can reclaim our agency to shape hopeful futures for the environment. The conversation will be chaired by Clover Hogan, climate activist and founder of Force of Nature. British sign language (BSL) provided by Interpreting Matters. The panel features: Daze Aghaji, climate justice activist; Steffi Bednarek Climate Psychologist and Founder of the Centre for Climate Psychology; Satish Kumar peace-pilgrim, life-long activist and former monk; Dr Kris de Meyer, Director of UCL Climate Action Unit and Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London.”
Burnout From Humans: 'At The Edge Conversation'
Kumi Naidoo, Louisa Zondo, Vanessa Andreotti
Mar 31st | 18:30-20:00 GMT | Online
“Our fourth conversation At the Edge features Kumi Naidoo and Louisa Zondo, directors of the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism. In this reflective dialogue, they share how their experience with AI intersected with profound loss, love, and the healing power of creativity. Kumi and Louisa recount the emotional turmoil they faced in 2023 after encountering an AI-generated new song that cloned the voice of their late musician son, Ricky Rick, yet lacked the aliveness that had defined him. Through an intense in-studio process with family and sound experts, they brought the song to life in a way that honoured his spirit. The song "stronger" continues to warm their hearts. Their journey with AI is one of complexity, grief, and discovery, offering lessons on the potential for AI to embody love, compassion, and responsibility when approached with relational accountability and care.” See more info and the other session recordings here.
Can AI Help Us Win Hearts and Minds?
SOGI Campaigns
Apr 3rd | 15:00-16:00 CET, 14:00-15:00 GMT | Online – Interactive Workshop
“With hate-mongers increasingly in power everywhere around the world, large parts of public opinion are being swayed towards conservative attitudes. Changing hearts and minds is therefore more than ever an emergency for our movements, and to do this we have to find the most effective way to address our audiences. But how can we know what they truly think and what messages are most likely to be consensual ? How can we go beyond anecdotal piecemeal results that traditional focus groups and interviews often provide? Ever wondered how AI could be good for this? Remesh is one tool that provides AI-powered focus groups, allowing for large scale conversation and real time results that highlight consensus, divergence, common themes, and much more.”
The Great Weaving Game
Hajar Tazi
Apr 21st | 14:00-16:00 GMT |
“As dominant worldviews, structures, and systems built on extraction, competition, and separation unravel, a counter tide is silently rising. Around the world, communities, movements, and networks are planting ancient and new seeds of life-sustaining imaginaries, structures, and systems rooted in interdependence, care, and mutual flourishing. Simply, The Great Weaving is the practice of deep listening to the quiet breath of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, and of attuning to the places and spaces where The Great Turning is already unfolding. It is a living process of interlacing our roots, weaving the mycelial web of possibility, and tending to the seeds of life-sustaining futures. The Great Weaving Game is an invitation to consciously participate in this re-weaving, to bring together threads of wisdom, practice, and possibility into a dynamic, flourishing tapestry of alternative eco-social imaginaries, connecting and nurturing them so they can blossom into life-sustaining realities.”
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.)
“How do we think our way through the messes we’re in when the way we think is part of the mess?” – Nora Bateson
“I made the mistake of thinking the truth would be its own ambassador.” – ‘The Contingency Plan’, Steve Waters
“Look at the gift of being, now. Look at the astonishing responsibility of legacy-leaving. And look at what you’ve inherited in the wonder of this world. And what will our time leave?” – Robert Macfarlane
“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.” – Joanna Macy
"The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible" – Toni Cade Bambara
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