Thank you for visiting this online conversation summary by the Center for Story-based Strategy (CSS) and the New Tactics community.
People and communities use stories to understand the world and our place in it. These stories are embedded with power – the power to explain and justify what is normal, as well as the power to make change imaginable and urgent. A narrative analysis of power encourages us to ask: Which stories define cultural norms? Where did these stories come from? Whose stories were ignored or erased to create these norms? And, most urgently, what new stories can we tell to help create the world we desire?
This conversation helped human rights defenders to learn more about story-based strategy and how to integrate it into campaign planning. It was an opportunity for those practitioners using story-based strategies to share their experiences, questions, and ideas.
Tactical Examples Shared in the Conversation:
- Catalyst Centre used a resistance framing strategy called ‘Naming the Moment’ to rebrand Columbus Day in Canada. They called it “Celebrating 500 Years of Resistance and Survival” to problematize Columbus Day and highlight indigenous struggles.
- The Design Action Collective distributed a visual report to the Benin government, the UN and the media. The report highlighted Nigerian refugees who fled Nigeria after protesting Shell Oil’s practices. This tactic succeeded putting pressure on the Benin government to safely relocate the Nigerian refugees.
- We Belong Together: Women for Common Sense Immigration Reform employs a vision based storytelling strategy to turn tactics into a larger narrative campaigning for immigration reform.
- smartMeme partnered with Unity Alliance to create the meme Bank vs. America. Reframing and ‘brand jamming’ the Bank of America logo during the Occupy Movement in 2012.
- The National Immigrant Youth Alliance employs direct action and civil disobedience in coordination with their campaign #bringthemhome. They challenge border control, deportations and work to bring back undocumented youth who have been deported through community organizing.
- In Egypt, the Women and Memory Forum challenged gender roles in fairy tales and traditional stories. They brought Egyptian women together for workshops to rewrite these stories.
- A conversation participant wrote and illustrated a storybook for health care providers to communicate to Pakistani children the dangers of prostitution without breaking social taboos.
- Tostan uses a holistic Community Empowerment Program that frames Female Genital Circumcision in nonformal human rights education. They highlight its health consequences to address the problems of FGC practice.
- The Puppet Underground created extreme visual contrast by using beautiful butterfly puppets to stand up to police in protests. This and other puppet tactics here.
What is Story Based Strategy?
Story-based strategy approach looks at social change methods through a narrative lens. The Center for Story-Based Strategy (formerly smartMeme) believes it is about changing stories in the dominant culture to create more possibilities for social justice movements. Narratives are transformative and have power. The story-based strategy often uses existing narratives to challenge dominant norms. Judeo-christian and folklore stories are commonly used. Using widely known narratives and changing them taps into collective, social, and cultural knowledge. Drawing on metaphors, symbolism, images, and strategies people are already familiar with. From these metaphors, symbols, and images, story-based strategy creates Memes, which CSS defines as, “contagious ideas, stories, images, and rituals that spread from imagination to imagination, generation to generation, shaping and shifting human cultures.” Some examples of successful Memes are Bank vs. America or Think Globally, Act Globally.
Examples of Effective Story-based Strategy
A story-based strategy can be useful in communicating the effectiveness of non-violence and other social justice themes. These strategies ground the message in what is factual but have persuasive stories and visual communications. Sharing meaningful information should change social norms in positive ways, such as Tostan’s work to eliminate Female Genital Circumcision practices in rural communities in West and East Africa. Effective and powerful narratives work on a spectrum of who’s benefiting from injustice vs. who’s trying to do justice rather than a ‘benefitting the needy’ model.
Challenges to Story-based Strategy
A narrative and story-based strategy presents several challenges. Trying to defend existing/negative narratives with counter-narratives can be counter-productive and distract from the social justice issue being addressed. Stories have limits and can be used by opposing parties. They are often contradictory, offering multiple interpretations. In addition, reframing narratives must work with and break down the ‘narrative filter,’ which CSS defines as the existing assumptions people have about the world that screen out new information that doesn’t fit with their existing mental frameworks. Therefore, social justice campaigns should work within established group processes to tell stories in a way that develops new visions, critiques, solutions, etc.
How do we frame our message to go beyond the choir?
Stories have power. How do organizations use and communicate this power in their narrative? Organizations shared the methods and narrative strategies they used to make concepts clear to their audience. One participant shared an example of using narrative to explore intersectionality, such as being black and a feminist in America. Other methods suggested include connecting the narrative to universal elements of human experience and creating change from below rather than above.
Using Narrative to Make Change
The organization Waging Nonviolence uses this technique and is currently working on a book about motherhood and activism. Their approach complicates ideas on activism and suggests that everyone is an activist in some way, from mothers to children to workers, etc. Design Action shows how design can be used as a metaphor to tell a story differently and pull the audience in, motivating them to take action. They give an example of a visual report they made about Nigerian refugees in Benin displaced by Shell Oil. This report is an example of how reframing and packaging narratives can incite change.
Identifying and Expanding the Audience
How can organizations use narratives to expand beyond a base audience? CSS provides several frameworks and worksheets for creating powerful narratives that help define the meaning and framing of a situation. Their Battle of the Story strategy asks questions that contextualize the story–its conflict, characters, intended audience, underlying assumption, etc–to persuade people who aren’t necessarily already in agreement with the social change effort. An organization needs to know who its audience is and who it is trying to move to action. In addition, organizations should be open to new audiences far outside of their base. One participant shared an example of reassessing women over 60 in the South and finding that their values correspond to the values of immigrant women. Thus, it is important to expand beyond an organization’s base to reach diverse audiences.
How do we change deeply held cultural narratives and open new spaces for our stories?
Powerful narratives and effective story-based strategies change cultural norms and create a space for new stories, ideas, and norms to develop. CSS believes there is a moment they term a ‘psychic break’ that is the process or moment of realization when a deeply held cultural narrative is questioned. This often stems from a realization that a system, event, or course of events does not match someone’s core values. Participants offered various methods on how to create a psychic break and use it in social justice and human rights campaigns. One method is to search for localized stories for support and use them to fight existing narratives. Other methods shared include ‘brand jamming’, ‘cultural jamming’, and ‘Naming the Moment.’
Challenges to Psychic Breaks
Balancing cultural sensitivity and human rights reform presents a challenge to creating psychic breaks. Campaigns to end Female Genital Circumcision exemplify this. Organizations such as Tostan navigate human rights injustices and cultural norms, attempting to address these human rights issues while still respecting the culture and its beliefs. Another challenge to changing a story is using reductive memes, as one participant noted. Without powerful and enthusiastic campaigns backing the meme, it will not be effective.
What does it mean to tell an aspirational narrative?
Storytelling can be a tool for healing pain and putting humanity into human rights and social justice issues. Stories of overcoming oppression and pain create aspirational narratives that promote change and a view of a better world. These stories reframe the notion of what is impossible and what is possible. Often, it is challenging to move beyond narratives of pain and what is wrong with the world. However, story-based strategies rely on changing negative narratives into positive, aspirational ones. One way of doing this is to build a common vision that an organization or alliance is working for. This vision helps shape what specific narratives look like so that they fall under the umbrella of the common vision. Furthermore, creating narratives that show empowered images helps create a goal to work toward.
Resources:
New Tactics:
- Powerful Persuasion: Combating Traditional Practices that Violate Human Rights Online Conversation, New Tactics’ Kristin Antin connects to this tactic.
- Cultural Resistance: The Arts of Protest Online Conversation, New Tactics’ Kristin Antin connects to this tactic.
- Using Humor to Expose the Ridiculous Online Conversation
- Using Theater for Human Rights Education and Action Online Conversation
- Public Audiences: Creating Space to Recognize Victims of Internal Conflict in Peru, New Tactics Case Study: storytelling plays a crucial role in healing, remembering and understanding.
Worksheets:
- CSS Drama Triangle worksheet: tool to think about the implications of a framing strategy
- CSS Battle of the Story worksheet: tool to reframe existing narratives.
- The Ruckus Society Action Framework: worksheet for initiating direct action.
- Catalyst Center Naming the Moment Manual
- Beautiful Trouble: various resources
- New Tactics’ Building a Common Vision worksheet.
Books and Articles:
