Welcome back,
Our hearts are with the people of Libya this week, and everyone suffering from our unsustainable systems 🖤
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Below: facilitating a public mandate for change; shadow forces doing the opposite; three startling signals of collapse; and some healing events and opportunities.
This is our 43rd newsletter since this effort began under a different name back in 2020. If you’re keen to explore what else we have shared in the past, see the searchable Archive on our website.
Shared with care, in solidarity.
Sessions
Public Session
November 2nd | 16:30-18:00 GMT | Curator: Cassie Robinson
There’s been a bit of a switch around: we’re moving Bridgit Antoinette Evans’s session to next year and are excited to bring forwards Cassie Robinson’s session, details to follow.
Shares
Key: 📋 Report | 📝 Article | 🎙️ Podcast | ⚙️ Tool
Towards a UK Public Engagement Strategy
Climate Outreach, Ashden, Involve
“We need a comprehensive public engagement strategy, as called for by the Climate Change Committee and Chris Skidmore’s Net Zero Review.” This report “defines public engagement, makes four key asks, outlines the vital components for a public engagement strategy to succeed, and includes a number of case studies of successful campaigns delivered by UK councils.” Might also be worth mentioning the sewage.
#messaging #tactics
Sustaining the Political Mandate for Climate Action
Steve Westlake & Rebecca Willis, Green Alliance
“Responding to the climate crisis is a fundamental challenge for politics today. But how do UK politicians, charged with leading the way, navigate the issue?” A sober(ing) view of how politicians in the UK are viewing the complex dynamics of pursuing sufficient change, offering 7 conclusions for how to strengthen and support political action on climate change.
#insight #tactics
Climate, Security and Migration
GSCC, Climate Insights Hub
“The vast majority connecting climate and security right now are progressive voices, or those of a pro-climate persuasion. They do so because they think it expands the coalition of people concerned about climate change…(we have) some time to ‘inoculate’ public and elite debate if we wish to, and if we have the infrastructure to do it. We find the best narratives for doing this in Europe are focusing on the ‘Bad Guys’ who perpetuate…malign narratives.”
#insight #narrativestrategy
Meet the Shadowy Global Network Vilifying Climate Protestors
Amy Westervelt & Geoff Dembicki, The New Republic
A collaboration with Drilled and Desmog, revealing the extensive reach and pernicious impact of reactionary think tanks. “They’ll throw something out into the public sphere, which will get a little bit of press, and then before you know it, a new law has been written, possibly by one of them. And now you have the criminalization of what was previously seen as legitimate civil protest.” Also see what PragerU have been up to.
#tactics #framing #reactionary
Canaries 0: Coal Mine: 3
Jamie Wheal, Homegrown Humans
“If our very symbols of perseverance and adaptability, from seed vaults, to desert succulents to jungle vines are faltering, we’re going to have to rethink our benchmarks…our metaphors, those canaries we placed so carefully in their cages to let us know when trouble was brewing, are keeling over. It might be time to carefully start packing up our things, and head for higher ground.”
#deepnarrative #framing
Passing the messaging stick: Changing The Narrative About First Nations
Words To Win By
“We pull back the curtain on how reframing, message testing and implementation of new narratives gets done. And we hear how this work done for and by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communicators is changing how Australians perceive these communities and with it enabling long overdue recognition not merely of rights but of the leadership of First Nations on protecting our environment.”
#narrativestrategy #framing #messaging
🎙️ Listen here | 📋 Read here
Assembling An Assembly Guide
Democracy Next
In case you’re worried that our existing political infrastructure is inadequate, “this 3-stage guide will accompany you through the different steps of designing, running, and acting on the results of a Citizens’ Assembly. It draws on and points to a curated selection of the best available resources. From deciding how to choose and define an issue, to setting the budget, timeline, and which people to involve, this guide aims to make it a simple and clear process.“
#tactics
⚙️ See here
Events
Facing Human Wrongs 2.0: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability
Continuing Studies UVIC | Online | Sep 17th or Nov 5th
“This six-week online intensive course was designed to guide you through an exploration of the ongoing systemic violence we perpetuate towards one another and the planet we are part of. This transformative journey aims to support you in processing your responses, moving away from guilt and shame, and cultivating a compass of sobriety, maturity, discernment, and responsibility.”
“Expands on the invitations of the book "Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism" and the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective. Half of the proceeds of the course will be redistributed to the Indigenous communities in South America (Huni Kui, Tremembé, Pitaguary and Fulni-ô Indigenous communities) of the land and water protectors who have inspired and supported the pedagogical intent and approach of this course.”
MAIA Group Job Opportunities
MAIA | Deadline Oct 2nd, 9am
MAIA is looking for a Communications Lead; Culture x Liberation Lead; Sites of Imagination Lead; Resourcing the Movement Researcher.
“MAIA is an organisation engaging culture and Black imagination as strategy to move from imagination to liberation. We explore this in community, supporting capacity-building in personal, structural and sustained ways through the creation of spaces, artistic interventions, programmes and resourcing. We work beyond borders from our home city, Birmingham, UK. MAIA's vision is a world towards liberation, in which artists are resourced and mobilised to reimagine its possibilities.”
🗓️ Apply here
The Quiet Enchanting
Superflux, King’s College Cultural Institute | 10th Oct onwards
An installation of digitally generated artworks along the newly pedestrianised Strand Aldwych on King's Strand Campus, which will “place visitors in a speculative world where the surrounding Borough of Westminster has been rewilded…(to) imagine a mythic time of ecological abundance, where Westminster is in harmony with the natural world.” The project has been inspired by Superflux’s ‘Cascade Inquiry’ research initiative.
🗓️ See here
Rehearsing Freedoms Festival
Healing Justice London | 11 Oct - 11 Nov
“A month-long, multi-site festival of community health and healing, movement building and culture…the culmination of a two-year programme of community-led health and healing, working towards building structural justice and public health, which asks: What is the potential of public health for all of us when it is determined by more of us? What are the conditions and capacities that we need to help us achieve this, and how can we do this now?”
Quotes
This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications.
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” – Alice Walker
“It’s really important to understand we’re not seeing reality. We’re seeing a story that’s being created for us.” Patrick Cavanagh
“Unless we change the whole way we conceive of what humanity is, what the world is, and how the two connect, we will not get this right.” – Iain McGilchrist
“We live in troubled times, times of decay and predicted collapse. But such times, painful as they are, also provide opportunities for change and for growing the new. Within the cracks the future can be glimpsed. It is present in new systems, movements and stories that have the potential to be life-changing. These emergent possibilities must be shaped by us, for us. This is our time. This is our social revolution.” – Hilary Cottam
"The future can't be predicted, but it can be envisaged and brought lovingly into being." – Donella Meadows
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