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Narrative Change, Popular Culture and Cultural Strategy

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Introduction

A list of key resources collated by the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling IRIS exploring narrative change, popular culture, cultural organizing and cultural strategy.

Resources

Cultural Strategy: An Introduction & Primer

Nayantara Sen, Art/Work Practice and Power California, 2019

This resource explores the what, why, and how of Cultural Strategy. It is an introduction to key concepts and ideas about Cultural Strategy and pulls together various strands of thought as they relate to this emergent field.

The primer includes:

  • What is Cultural Strategy?
  • What is not Cultural Strategy?
  • 10 Characteristics of Cultural Strategy
  • What’s incompatible with Cultural Strategy?
  • Understanding and Measuring Cultural Impact

Cultural Strategy is indispensable to social movement building because it creates conditions for sustainable cultural change, and it fortifies social justice interventions with hope, possibility, and imagination. For those communities most impacted by oppression, Cultural Strategy centers a politic of repair, redress, reclamation, healing, and building power. As a result, dominant cultural conditions can become conducive for all people to thrive and flourish. Since Cultural Strategy is inextricable from cultural work, artists, creatives, and cultural workers are key agents and drivers of Cultural Strategy. – p. 2

See also related report – Until We Are All Free: A Case Study in Cultural Strategy

The Culture Hack Curriculum

Culture Hack Labs, 2023

The curriculum is a self-directed learning journey to democratize the Culture Hack Labs approach, methodology and tools. This eight module educational tool will support narrative practitioners to understand the ontological shift that is necessary to disrupt the core assumptions of capitalist modernity and equip practitioners with the tools to transform the critical narrative landscapes of our time.

Culture Hack Lab Reports are a series of created and curated content on the dominant narratives and how they can be reframed for systems change. CHL is centrally focused on finding life-affirming narratives that can guide us through the uncertain territories of this transition. By sharing these reports, our aim is to support and unite social movements, journalists, activists, organizations, artists, and culture hackers with shared framing that transcends the ‘us-versus-them’ binaries and evolves narratives into spaces of healing, restoration and transformation. CHL will be periodically publishing these reports with a focus on different thematic areas. The service we wish to offer is to help create a world in which public discourse shifts towards imagining post-capitalist realities that address root causes, build systemic alternatives and usher in adjacent possible futures.

The Curriculum includes:

Start watching Introduction to Narratives

The Best Organizing Strategy You’ve Never Heard Of: Why Fan Activism Has the Power to Radically Change Our World

The Fan Organizer Coalition, 2022


FANDOM is a human instinct. For as long as people have been telling stories, we’ve been driven to share those stories with one another: through retelling, reimagining, and remixing. Fandom happens when media is consumed in community. You’re probably picturing a convention floor, cosplayers, and release parties, but if we travel back in time we’ll find oral stories passed down generation to generation: pub-goers demanding a favorite tale from the traveling bard, family stories that get more fantastical with each retelling, the fish bigger and bigger as the years go on. When we love something, our instinct is to share it.

As our world became more globally connected, fans with ideas considered “fringe” began to be able to connect – the popularity of imagining Captain Kirk and Spock in a romantic relationship (shipping, and in the case of a same-gender relationship, slash shipping) during Star Trek’s original run is often cited as a beginning of modern fandom culture. Using systems of forwarding addresses and hand-assembled magazines, Kirk/Spock shippers – primarily
women – distributed original stories, art, and analysis of the show through the mail. Kirk/Spock fandom stands out not just because of the ingenuity involved or the fact that it remains a popular ship to this day, but because it represents a shift in core fandom culture: imagining Kirk and Spock together wasn’t just retelling the story of Star Trek, it was retelling it in a way that imagined how that world – how our world – could be.

FAN ACTIVISM is the practice of organizing fans of pop culture for social change. It’s a diverse community of practitioners with varying interests, fandoms, and approaches to the work, but a common vision unites the fan activism community: to make the world a more loving, equitable place for all.

During 2021 and 2022, a founding group of fan organizers joined a collaborative efort, led by Fandom Forward and Black Nerds Create and supported by Pop Culture Collaborative, to document the core principles and opportunities of fan activism. We hope this document serves as both an entry point to fan activism and a call to action for movement strategists looking for innovative methods to meet the demands of our time.

In our favorite stories there’s always a moment when it becomes clear that every person and every tool is needed if the fight is going to be won. As organizers across the globe work to push back a growing rise of fascism, division, and greed, we know fan activism has unique opportunities to build momentum in that work.

As they say in another iconic space opera, Star Wars: this is a rebellion, right? Let’s rebel.

Fandom Formation Double Issue: A Fandom Primer and Lessons From Real Housewives of Politics

Tracey Van Slyke, Jeff Yang and Katie Bowers, 2023

Article by the Pop Culture Collaborative who have conducted research about pop culture fandoms and looked at why fandoms are important to narrative change and movement-building strategy, includes examples of Harry Potter and Real Housewives.

Some key learnings are:

  • “Fandoms offer meaning. They give people a way to organize their lives, form community and meet new people. 
  • Fandoms form identity. Over time, deep immersion within fandoms informs and transforms people’s social identities. This ultimately impacts who they believe belongs in our country—and who doesn’t. 
  • Fandoms impact people’s behaviors in the real world. The activities and behaviors in pop culture fandoms carry over into civic behavior: protesting, voting, and—on the toxic side—sometimes even violent actions.” – Source

Pop culture fandoms are powerful narrative organizing environments that can orient millions of people towards pluralist OR toxic beliefs and behaviors. Working with and within pop culture fandoms is a critical evolution of the pop culture narrative change field’s work. – Tracy Van Slyke, Jeff Yang, Katie Bowers

See also these resources from the article.

  • Fandom 101 Primer
    “Pop culture fandoms are where transformational narrative immersion and mass organizing strategies meet.” – Tracy Van Slyke
  • Fandom Element Identification Worksheet
    Worksheet developed by Pop Culture Collaborative Senior Advisor on Narrative Strategy and Digital Intelligence Jeff Yang. Its intention is to provide a lens through which to explore ‘fandoms in the wild’ to help identify when new ones are emerging, and to better engage with and embrace existing and established ones that might be potentially valuable organizing partners.

Culture Change Project: Findings and Methods Report

The Frameworks Institute, 2023

Comprehensive findings report: How are Americans’ mindsets shifting, and how have things changed since last year? 2023

Since the spring of 2020, FrameWorks has been conducting qualitative and quantitative research to track shifts in cultural mindsets and working with partners to understand implications for those working for progressive, systems-level change.

This report is the second comprehensive report on our research findings, coming after 2.5 years of deep investigation. The findings presented in this report build upon our previous findings, and are based on a combination of focus groups, in-depth interviews, and a first-of-its-kind nationally representative survey. The first comprehensive research report, released in June 2022, can be found here.

Thus far, our research is showing that the previous gains we saw in systemic thinking (compared to individualistic thinking) may be leveling off—but people are still generally thinking more systemically than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread racial justice uprisings of 2020.

Findings

1.The balance between individualistic and systemic thinking appears to be stabilizing at a new equilibrium, but the picture varies by issue.
2. Gender has become tightly linked with transgender issues and transphobia in public consciousness
3. Gender essentialism is often disavowed when talking about domestic responsibilities but affirmed when talking about work outside the home.
4. “System is rigged” thinking is being applied across a wider range of social and political issues
5. Supreme Court justices are assumed to be political actors.
6. People increasingly see our Constitution and system of government as outdated.
7. There has been a steady rise, and then fall, in zero-sum thinking about society in general.

The Time is Now: The Power of Native Representation in Entertainment: A Guide for Industry Professionals

IllumiNative, 2022

This guide is a resource for writers, producers, directors, creators, and others in the entertainment industry who seek to develop accurate stories and characters by and about Native peoples in television, film, and other forms of media.

This guide incorporates the learnings and insights of nearly two dozen Native creatives who participated in in-depth interviews to discuss the opportunities, barriers, and experiences of working within the entertainment industry as actors, writers, directors, producers, and as content developers. We cover
everything from the basics like terminology and demographics of Indian Country, to stereotypes that should be avoided and common myths. We also include guidance on working with Native communities, answer some frequently asked questions, and share best practices in areas like cultivating Native content and depicting Native cultures. – Source p. 4

New Brave World: The Power, Opportunities, and Potential of Pop Culture for Social Change in the UK

Pop Change, Alice Sachrajda and Marzena Zukowska, 2021

In “New Brave World,” authors Alice Sachrajda and Marzena Zukowska dive deep into the narrative ocean. They, along with numerous contributors, explore the power of cultural currents, the opportunities to harness narrative power through content on television, and they begin to shine a light on the vast, unexplored potential of pop culture for social change in the UK. The report profiles emerging and leading innovators who are using culture to build power in the movements for racial justice, migrants’ rights, LGBTQ+ equality and disability justice.

The report focuses on areas of pop culture where there is momentum for narrative change, and in particular, television, film, and gaming as opportunities for exploration. It also lifts up examples of inspiration from the Pop Culture Collaborative and its ecosystem of grantees.

Listen to the authors talk about the report.

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