Newsletter #9
Impact stories | Digital politics | Climate fraud
Hi folks,
This week our thoughts are with Trudi Warner, the retired social worker who is facing 2 years in prison for holding up a sign reminding juries of their right to give a verdict according to their conscience. Hundreds of other people standing with her also now face imprisonment.
We are encouraging people to share the work of Defend Our Juries, Plan B and the Good Law Project.
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For anyone messaging on climate and cost of living in response to this government’s recent roll back of climate policies // culture-war framing; we’re re-upping the Messaging This Moment guidance, summarised here in a LinkedIn post by co-author Nicky Hawkins.
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Our usual shares continue below. Please note that there are two deadlines of tomorrow in the Events section.
Shares
Key: 📝 Article | 📋 Report | 🎙️ Podcast | ⚙️ Tool
How to Tell Real Stories About Impact
Annie Neimand, SSIR
Organisations “tend to share vignettes and profiles, not stories,” but “telling compelling stories and telling stories about impact do not have to be in conflict.” If we craft stories with care, about changing systems collectively as part of an ecosystem, and connecting to human experiences, “we avoid contributing to harmful narratives that make it impossible to change systems and cultural narratives.” “Organizations are important collaborators and accomplices in change work. Let’s let our stories show how it’s done.”
#narrativestrategy
Indigenous Women Are Showing Us How to Fight For Environmental and Human Rights
V (formerly Eve Ensler), Guardian
Following the recent win for Indigenous rights (and therefore all of us) in Brazil, V reflects on the need to “reforest politics and the mind”, and how “we need to bring an ethics of care and solidarity, beauty and poetry…honoring the generosity and wisdom of Indigenous women who protect our lives while risking their own.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
Digital Politics 1: First, They Break You Down
Rachel Coldicutt, Just Enough Internet
“A short series on UK political messaging, social media, and the Culture Wars…The first is about the recent past, and the power of segmentation. The second is about the present, and what happens when complaint gets weaponised. And the third is about what progressives can learn from fandoms.” Also see Sunder Katwala writing for Labour Together.
#insight
A New Era in Climate Communications
New Zero World
“Our intention for A New Era in Climate Communications is to facilitate a digital knowledge hub, a place to learn, inspire and support, a place to explore and to break down the communication barriers standing in the way of solving the climate crisis. Working together is not an option, it is an imperative. United, we can bring together the knowledge that bridges the gaps between data and emotion, information and action, and work with each other in new ways to shape the campaigns, messaging and stories that will help determine our future.”
#narrativestrategy #issuenarrative #insight #tactics
Citizens are Hungry for Change
Food, Farming and Countryside Commission
“The UK public overwhelmingly back state intervention to improve the food system. Citizens see that food is at the crux of many of the issues facing us today. They want government to make sensible policy decisions that protect people and planet, and they want powerful food businesses to be more accountable…UK citizens across all demographic, age and political groups reject ‘nanny state’ concerns and want the government to do more to fix food.”
#insight #issuenarrative
How to Change Trans Narratives Collectively
Laintersección.net
“A strategic communication guide to promote new trans narratives. In this document you will find a summary of several investigations that reveal the digital ecosystem and the perceptions of public opinion about LGTBI+ realities, a methodology to design and organize collective digital strategies and some learnings from a campaign we carried out last fall (Proyecto Hortensia).”
#narrativestrategy #issuenarrative
Transforming Narrative Waters
Ruth Taylor & Manda Scott, Accidental Gods
“How do we change the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves and each other – and our place in the world – into stories of transformation, trust and togetherness?” A conversation inspired by Ruth’s earlier piece, To Unpathed Waters and Undreamed Shores, encouraging us to move beyond silos and imagine “bringing more awe to the world”.
#narrativestrategy
🎙️ Listen here
Unmasking Climate Deception: The ClimateFraud Framework
Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
“A draft framework that can be used to identify false solutions proposed in the context of the climate and nature emergency…originally created by the Federation of the Huni Kui Indigenous Peoples of Acre, in the Amazon, and collaboratively redesigned in the context of the Moving With Storms CNE Program of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, at the University of British Columbia…urging us to question the allure of quick fixes that fail to address the systemic root causes of the massive challenges we are facing as a species.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
⚙️ See here
Events
Strategic Communications Role
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Emerging Futures Programme | 29th September closing date
“Creating strategic communications capacity for the Emerging Futures programme…We need someone who can develop and maintain a deep understanding of our objectives and primary audiences. As an experienced comms professional, you’ll apply that insight to help the team craft powerful messages that land, and give careful thought to the best channels, voices and mediums to advance the work.” 6-12 months contract.
🗓️ Details here
6 Month Leadership Programme
Reclaiming Agency | 29th September closing date
“Reclaiming Agency is a 6-month transformational leadership programme designed to directly support full time roles in the marketing communications industry. The purpose of the programme is to help leaders identify and experiment with how their organisations can prosper as they transition in helping create a more sustainable economy and society.”
🗓️ Apply here
Descendants & Destiny
Groundswell Project, Indigo at the O2 | 19th October 19:30 BST
Re-up from Newsletter #4 with a new intro video. “Words & Music - A Powerful Black History Month Event” with Dr Makaziwe Mandela, Adjoa Andoh, David Olusoga, René Carayol, Musa Motha & The London Community Gospel Choir. “In recognition of Black History Month, a stimulating night of keynotes, conversations and entertainment to inspire, motivate and drive positive action in the sphere of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
🗓️ Get tickets here (not for profit)
Quotes
(This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications.)
“Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child. // It is your child. // Defend it as if it were your lover. // It is your lover.” – Aurora Levins Morales
“The daunting task ahead of us is to completely rebuild the world economy...it is time to get uncomfortable.” – Ha-Joon Chang
"Western intellectual and academic discourse is so configured that it is easier to talk about abstract economic systems than it is to address racism, imperialism, and the structures of organized violence that sustain global hierarchies of power." – Amitav Ghosh
“To any rational mind, there aren’t economics and ecological economics. There’s economics, and then there’s the delusion that such a thing as ‘non-ecological economics’ could exist.” – Anna Mercury
“I'm no longer accepting the things I can’t change, I’m changing the things I can't accept.” – Angela Davis
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