// Project

In early 2017, Narrative Initiative identified a critical need and number of promising efforts to deploy narrative strategies in the face of authoritarian populism across the country. Narrative Initiative identified states as an important context for testing narrative strategies that could bridge short-term interventions with long-term goals, and began work in Minnesota in late 2017.

Narrative Initiative provided trainings and workshops that increased the capacity of key organizations working in coalition to deploy narrative change strategies in their respective communities. We also supported the creation of a “narrative nervous system,” a set of channels for practitioners to share, align, and coordinate action. Our work with organizations in Minnesota enabled and empowered both individual organizations and the coalition as a whole to experiment with and adopt narrative change practices more regularly, “positioned Minnesota for a wave of policy advocacy” as one practitioner put it, and reinforced the idea that narrative change is a long-term power-building strategy.