Transforming Narrative Waters: Growing the Practice of Deep Narrative Change in the UK

Introduction

Transforming Narrative Waters: Growing the practice of deep narrative change in the UK provides background on narrative change practices as well as the opportunities and challenges for narrative work in the UK.

The report examines what it takes to design deep narrative change, how to design narrative interventions, and offers recommendations for building more successful narrative change projects in the UK.

While we might win occasional policy battles, these wins are constantly under attack and in danger of being reversed. We win some battles, but we are losing the war. One of the reasons for this is that we are often working against powerful narratives that are embedded in the overarching culture. Thus we also need to look beyond the policy sphere, as narratives are embedded in the larger culture and in institutions. They shape the way in which problems and priorities are identified; they limit the types of solutions that are viewed as acceptable and possible, and determine how certain types of people are categorized and treated. – Brett Davidson

Contents

Introduction 04
Defining deep narrative change 07
What it means to do deep narrative change 14
Current practice in the UK 19
Barriers to practice 32
Recommendations 42
Concluding thoughts 60
Sources 61

Report Outline

Here is a brief outline of some of the report’s findings.

What it Means to do Deep Narrative Change

1. Understanding that we are more than the sum of our parts.
2. Finding common cause.
3. Designing deep narrative immersion.

Barriers to Deep Narrative Change Practice

1. The space for deep narrative change work in the UK is largely occupied by white, middle-class, university educated, professionalised NGO staff.
2. Organisations are not currently set up to invest in deep narrative change – a reality reinforced by our current funding model.
3. Narrative change is often understood as ‘presence’ not ‘power’ .
4. The siloed nature in which NGOs operate.
5. Two competing interpretations of values-led change.

Recommendations

1. Build diversity in the deep narrative space, by resourcing those introducing new transformative narratives.
2. Build allegiance and trust amongst narrative practitioners.
3. Adjust our understanding of what is needed to measure impact.
4. Make the argument to funders that sustained investment is vital.
5. Support greater narrative literacy.
6. Design opportunities to identify and work on common cause.
7. Build the technological infrastructure necessary to identity opportunities for deep narrative change.
8. Develop the capacity and confidence of cultural leaders to lead narrative interventions.

Concluding Thoughts

When we reflect on the monumental challenges that exist in today’s world, it is clear that we must go beyond our singleissue campaigns and dig into the very heart of how human beings understand themselves and their relationship with our living world.

To imagine a new way of being requires us to dispatch with the old narratives that anchor us to deep-rooted
ideas of individualism, separatism and domination over the natural world, and to listen to and amplify alternative deep narratives that have often long been upheld by indigenous and marginalised communities.

It is only through a cultural rebirth that champions our intrinsic values that human beings will have a chance of reshaping the systems that define our lives, the lives of all other living beings on our shared planet and the wellbeing of future generations.

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Transforming Narrative Waters: Growing the practice of deep narrative change in the UK

Explore Further

• Narrative Change: Start Here
• What Makes Narrative Change So Hard?
• Narrative Power and Collective Action: Conversations with People Working to Change Narratives for Social Good
• Impact Storytelling: The Ecosystem, the Evidence and Possible Futures