Introduction
During the early years of Narrative Initiative, we interviewed more than 100 thought leaders working on narrative change. This report captures some of what we learned.
In early February 2017, we set out on a listening tour of over 100 experts, innovators, and visionaries from a range of disciplines and communities working at the intersection of social justice and narrative change.
This report presents an overview of common challenges, hard-earned lessons, and urgent needs for the field, as well as insights into best practices.
Foreward
The field of narrative change is both emerging and eternal. From mythology to marketing, the human impulse — no, necessity — to make sense of the world, to justify values and bolster beliefs, is innate and immutable. We build, inherit and rely on schematic shortcuts for our own cognitive comprehension and physical survival. We learn codes and internalize signals meant to protect us: which colors and sounds represent safety or danger, whose authority we trust or reject, whose lives and dreams matter.
Humans, as pattern-seeking social creatures, assemble collections of mutually-reinforcing stories, in turn establishing shared common sense and constructing stereotypes about people and places, communities and cultures, ideologies and institutions.
