Hi folks,
Hope you’re well ❤️
We’re looking forward to seeing you at our Community Session next week, and are delighted to reveal that our Public Session in October will be curated by Bridgit Antoinette Evans, CEO of Pop Culture Collab.
This week’s shares include race class messaging guidance, vibe shift analysis, and emboldening lessons from indigenous wisdom and prophecy.
Shared with love, in solidarity.
Sessions
Community Session
September 7th | 11:30 GMT
As before this will be an informal chance to share, connect and learn, without being recorded or broadcast. If you have some work you’d like to bring, please let us know at inter-narratives@greenfunders.org
Public Session
October 3rd | 13:00 GMT | Curator: Bridgit Antoinette Evans
We’ll share more info and a registration link soon; in the meantime you can find out more about Bridgit’s work here. Also please note the date change since the last newsletter, and remember that you can find recordings of our previous public sessions on our webpage.
Shares
Key: ⚙️ Tool | 📋 Report | 📝 Article | 🎙️ Podcast | 🎬 Video
The Messaging Handbook: How To Write An Impactful Message
NEON
“Whether you are a spokesperson preparing for an interview, a campaigner writing copy or an organiser prepping for the doorstep, you need to think about how your message will be received by the people you want to reach. This Handbook offers guidance on how to write impactful messages, including broad principles, specific examples and full narratives to use.” (Thanks for sharing Funmibi Ogunlesi)
#narrativestrategy #messaging #tactics
⚙️ See here
Belonging Design Principles
Ashley Gallegos & Cecile Surasky, Othering & Belonging Institute
“The distinct belonging framework developed by the Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) includes a set of principles and practices that can root out structural inequality and exclusion of all kinds while helping us turn toward, rather than against, each other…If you’re ready to create a more just, impactful, and joyous school, workplace, or society, then join us on this journey of becoming a belonging-builder.” Brings to mind the Jemez Principles For Democratic Organising.
#tactics
Pride of the Elites: Political Correctness, Identity Politics and Class War
Alexander Beiner, The Bigger Picture
“How Elite Overproduction drives culture wars, and how to move beyond it.” Analysis encouraging us to reflect on what it really takes to achieve “deep systemic change”, at a time the ‘vibe’ is shifting, and the gap between elite “power-holders” and everyone else is widening. “What has happened with social justice ideology is that it has gone through a process of ‘abstractive sublimation’, in which practical concerns by minority groups, which may be dangerous to the status quo, are sublimated into a realm of abstraction that allows elites to reframe and ultimately ignore its calls for a redistribution of power.”
#tactics #deepnarrative
This Barbie Wants Narrative Change
Ruth Taylor, Common Cause
“On the surface, Barbie might appear to be a film championing equality and social justice, packed to the rafters with satire and stirring monologues, but dig a little deeper and you discover a film reinforcing the very values and worldviews underpinning consumer culture and capitalism.”
#issuenarrative
Mental Health Diagnoses Are Capitalist Constructs
Micha Frazer-Carroll, Novara Media
“Moving beyond divisive debates about diagnosis involves acknowledging the extent to which diagnosis is shaped by systems of power. Diagnosis isn’t an adjective (something we are) or a noun (something we have), it is a verb – an active process that is always moving, always serving an end. It can be wielded by the state in ways that are extremely harmful, but we can also break it apart and use it in ways that are liberating for us.”
#framing #tactics
Indigenous Wisdom & the Seed of Life
Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset), No Place Like Home
The author of Sacred Instructions discusses the increasing acceptance of indigenous wisdom by modern science, the essential role of the sacred feminine, the 80-10-10 rule for distributing our energy across transformation efforts, and shares prophecies and stories to encourage reflection and action.
#tactics #stories #deepnarrative
🎙️ Listen here
The Problem With Language
Ray Ison & Rachel Donald, Planet: Critical
A discussion about “relational dynamics, metaphor theory, knowledge creation, governance, meaning and obfuscation” along with “other forms of signification and communication being explored in the systems community, and how we can participate with language to deframe the world as we see it and reveal its true complexities.”
#framing #tactics
🎙️ Listen here
Dancing With The Cannibal Giant: New Stories for the Great Transition
Building A Local Economy
“When today's stories of crushing greed and endless growth have come to an end, what, then, will be the new stories?…a documentary film portraying five remarkable stories of people and places transforming the world. Narrated by Penobscot elder, Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset), we are introduced to the Penobscot mythology of the cannibal giant: a creature awakened by the destruction of mother earth. The film is told through the lens of this powerful prophecy: only if people can awaken to their own destruction, and the need for change, will the cannibal giant be put back to sleep.”
#deepnarrative #stories
🎬 See here
Events
Working for Climate Justice: trade unions in the front line against climate change
Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice; Institute of Employment Rights | October 27th | 09:30-17:00 GMT | London
“A free conference on ‘green bargaining’ strategies that will bring together trade union organisers, academics and campaigners…The trade union movement has been generally slow to accept the need for a bargaining approach to the greening of the economy and the aim of the conference is to discuss how the British trade union movement can play a leading role in workplace struggles for climate justice.”
Quotes
"Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving." – Christopher Browning
"We are in the midst of an epic contest...between the rights of Mother Earth and the rights of corporations and militarised states using obsolete world-views." – Vandana Shiva
“This is not the time to wallow in despair and fear, this is not the time to waste our energies pointing fingers and casting blame. This is a time for us to organise, it’s a time for us to galvanise our efforts, and to unify in ways that we never have before, to protect what is sacred and precious to us.” – Sherri Mitchell
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
“If your deepest-held beliefs can be comfortably absorbed into Starbucks’ PR strategy, it may be time to go on a vision quest.” – Alexander Beiner
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