Narrative power is central to deep, lasting social change. But building narrative power in the world means building narrative capacity within your community. Our Action and Organizing work focuses on creating and supporting networks and empowering movement partners to build–and act on–a long-term vision for change. We have several working groups that are grapple with challenges to equity within their respective fields and collaborate to create big narrative interventions. We organize strategy labs to provide a space for experimentation and content testing. We hold regional and global convenings to build a network of narrators and drive deeper collaboration.
Narrative North Star
The Narrative North Star (NNS) is a resource we have developed to support the narrative vision of our movement partners. Emerging from sustained internal movement work and carefully facilitated conversations, the Narrative North Star reflects a community’s core values and worldview. The Narrative North Star can guide campaign work, inform programmatic choices, and remind movement actors of their deepest aspirations for the future.
Action and Organizing
Bridging the gap between everyday communications work and longterm narrative strategy can be challenging. We build skilled, well-resourced narrative power centers, starting in social movement spaces, as close to community leaders as possible, to run meaningful narrative interventions. Working groups are the building blocks of our narrative organizing work.
Working Groups
Health Working Group
Disability justice and health equity are key themes across our work. We collaborate with Long Covid Justice and reproductive justice coalitions. Our organizing department gathers organizations and coalitions focused on health equity and builds their capacity to tackle harmful narratives, such as "deservingness" and "individualism." We are also working towards a museum exhibition on doulas and their critical role for maternal health.
Rural Democracy Working Group
Rural communities have often been excluded from the conversation on multiracial democracy building. In collaboration with the 22nd Century Initiative, we are building power with rural democracy organizers nationwide, whose work includes cultural strategy and community organizing. As frontline defenders against the rise of authoritarian populism, rural democracy organizers are critical to our long-term goal of building a true, multiracial democracy.
Climate Migration Working Group
Mass migration due to climate catastrophes is a growing global concern. Currently, we have partnered with Organizing Resilience to bring narrative organizing into disaster relief efforts. We also collaborate with climate change organizations to create a narrative strategy that resists criminalizing immigrants and further securitizing our shared natural resources.