Narrative landscaping allows us to identify the harmful narratives that hold back our vision for a better, world and to name the helpful narratives that advance our vision.
In sensemaking: While we conduct listening sessions with community partners to surface harmful and helpful narratives, our interviewers conduct a parallel process of collective meaning-making. We interpret the interviews, consider emerging and overlapping values and beliefs, and share stories we heard from our partners.
In field-building: The narrative landscaping process provides an opportunity for a community to better understand the values and beliefs animating each stakeholder’s aspirations and perception of the work at hand. Through our landscaping process, we also build the field’s knowledge with research, tools, lessons, and methodologies with the groups and networks we engage. Our processes and methods with each collaboration. We strive to make our research accessible, practical, and–most importantly–actionable for our movement partners.
On recent projects:
For a more in-depth look at our methodology, read “Orienting Together: Mapping Your Narrative Landscape.”
Landscape and Assessment
Recent Projects
We collaborated with ProsperOK, whose landscaping process led to the development and crafting of a Narrative North Star. We also did a landscaping report with members of Long Covid Justice, who then created a narrative style guide with Word Force to inform the implementation of their communications plan. With the Decolonizing Wealth Project, we collected themes and stories related to “care” from Indigenous and Black communities, identifying shared or distinct themes between these two communities.
Below is a selection of publications referencing our tools, including the Four Baskets model, the Waves model, and the polyvocal approach to narrative organizing.
