Re:imagining Change

HOW TO USE STORY-BASED STRATEGY TO WIN CAMPAIGNS, BUILD MOVEMENTS, AND CHANGE THE WORLD

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• Publisher: Pm Press E Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781604861976
• eBook ISBN: 9781604863581
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Provides resources, theory, hands-on tools and illuminating case studies for the next generation of innovative change makers. Re: Imagining Change is an inspirational look at the trailblazing methodology developed by the non-profit organisation smartMeme, which offers tools, training and strategy support to organisations and movements working for justice, ecological sanity and transformative social change. The authors provide a summary of their approach and call to innovate strategies for collectively addressing the escalating crisis of the 21st century.

1. Introduction: The Power of Story

1.1 From Improvement to Innovation

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

~Albert Einstein

Re:Imagining Change is an introduction to the ideas and methods of the smartMeme Strategy & Training Project. We founded smartMeme to innovate social change strategies in response to the movement-building and messaging demands of the globalized information age. We are motivated by the social and ecological crises facing our planet and by a belief that fundamental change is not only possible, but necessary. Our mission is to apply the power of narrative to organizing, movement building, and social transformation. Our dream is a movement of movements with the power, creativity, and vision to change the world by changing the stories that shape our collective destiny.

Movements have won public support with powerful stories like Rosa Parks’ refusal to change seats, the AIDS quilt carpeting the National Mall in Washington, or the polar bear stranded in a sea of melted ice.

SmartMeme is dedicated to holistic social change practices—shifting from issues to values, supplementing organization building with movement building, and exploring creative new strategies for confronting systemic problems. We believe that people-powered grassroots movements, led by those who are most directly affected, are the engines of true social progress.

SmartMeme convenes innovators from different movements to share ideas and reconsider strategies in the timeless endeavor of social change. The heartbeat of the work—building relationships, critical thinking, action, and reflection—remains constant. But these practices evolve with new technologies, tools, and techniques. Over the course of the last seven years, we’ve recognized that innovation doesn’t just mean improving what is already happening; innovation requires rethinking underlying assumptions and finding the courage to re-imagine what could happen.

Innovation requires creative thinking and testing hunches with real world experiments. Re:Imagining Change is an introduction to our methodology and a report-back from our first five years of experimentation in what we’ve come to call story-based strategy.

1.2 Our Approach: Story-based Strategy

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

~Muriel Rukeyser

Stories come in all shapes and sizes: daily anecdotes, movies, fables, or pre-packaged “news” stories created by the media. The stories we tell show what we value; the deepest personal narratives we carry in our hearts and memories remind us who we are and where we come from.

Historically, the power of stories and storytelling has been at the center of social change efforts. Organizers rely on storytelling to build relationships, unite constituencies, name problems, and mobilize people. Movements have won public support with powerful stories like Rosa Parks’ refusal to change seats, the AIDS quilt carpeting the National Mall in Washington, or the polar bear stranded in a sea of melted ice.

SmartMeme uses storytelling to integrate traditional organizing methods with messaging, framing, and cultural intervention. Our training curriculum explores the role of narrative in maintaining the entrenched relationships of power and privilege that define the status quo. Story-based strategy views social change through the lens of narrative power and positions storytelling at the center of social change strategy. This framework provides tools to craft more effective social change messages, challenge assumptions, intervene in prevailing cultural narratives, and change the stories that shape popular culture. Re:Imagining Change is an introduction to story-based strategy and outlines some of the analytical tools and practical strategies smartMeme has used to fuse storytelling and campaigning. (Image 1.1)

Image 1.1: Musicians and dancers from Son Del Centro in Santa Ana, California, lead a pageant of creative resistance at the 2005 Student/Farmworker Alliance Youth Encuentro in Immokalee, Florida.

1.3 About Re:Imagining Change

Risk more than others think is safe,

Care more than others think is wise,

Dream more than others think is practical,

Expect more than others think is possible.

~Anon

Re:Imagining Change is a stand-alone introduction to story-based strategy and a curriculum reader that can accompany story-based strategy workshops. We offer tools that can be applied to existing campaigns and explore narrative itself as a social change lens that, when used effectively, can lead to new types of strategies and action. This manual is a resource for people who want to create change and shift our society toward a more just and sustainable future.

It is our sincere hope that Re:Imagining Change will be a conversation starter with people from all walks of life who are willing to think big, dream hard, and struggle like hell for a better world.

We caution that, like all political strategies, narrative approaches must be grounded in principles and ethics.[1] In our case this means a commitment to honesty, undoing oppression, and accountability to our partners and the communities we serve. We situate our applications of story-based strategy in the context of struggles for social justice, self-determination, and an ecologically sane society.[2]

The ideas and tools presented in Re:Imagining Change are ingredients for a story-based strategy, and should be applied alongside the time-tested tools of strategic nonviolence,[3] strategic communications,[4] community organizing,[5] and antiracism.[6]

This manual is divided into five primary sections. The book opens with a visual overview of the story-based strategy campaign model. Section II introduces the theoretical framework of narrative power analysis. This includes using the elements of story to deconstruct the stories we want to change as well as to construct the stories we want to tell. Section III presents the battle of the story method for creating social change narratives and messages. Section IV outlines the points of intervention model with a focus on action at the point of assumption as a means of shifting narratives. Section V presents four case studies of story-based strategy applied in grassroots struggles. The final section explores the unique relevance of story-based strategy in addressing our present political moment as defined by the unfolding ecological crisis.

We have inevitably borrowed theoretical concepts from existing bodies of work. We also humbly offer some new specialized language to communicate innovations in our thinking. Our intent is not to mystify with jargon, but rather to embrace the power of naming to communicate new ideas. We have included a glossary to define key terms throughout the manual. Glossary items are marked in bold throughout the text.

At smartMeme, we approach this work with a curious spirit of experimentation. After five years of developing and applying these ideas, we still have far more questions than answers. It is our sincere hope that Re:Imagining Change will be a conversation starter with people from all walks of life who are willing to think big, dream hard, and struggle like hell for a better world. Share your critiques, ideas, questions, and stories ... join the conversation at www.smartmeme.org.

Story-based Strategy Campaign Model

We dream in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate, and love by narrative.

~Barbara Hardy

2. Narrative Power Analysis

2.1 We Are Made of Stories

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

~Zora Neale Hurston

We live in a world shaped by stories. Stories are the threads of our lives and the fabric of human cultures. A story can unite or divide people(s), obscure issues, or spotlight new perspectives. A story can inform or deceive, enlighten or entertain, or even do all of the above.

As humans, we are literally hardwired for narrative. Harvard University evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker argues that stories are essential to human learning and building relationships in social groups. There is growing consensus in the scientific community that the neurological roots of both storytelling and enjoyment of stories are tied to our social cognition.[1]

Just as our bodies are made of blood and flesh, our identities are made of narratives.

In one widely cited 1944 experiment, psychologists Fritz Heider and Mary-Ann Simmel showed subjects “an animation of a pair of triangles and a circle moving around a square,” and asked what was happening. The subjects’ responses (e.g. “The circle is chasing the triangles.”) revealed how they mapped a narrative onto the shapes. Numerous subsequent studies have reiterated how humans, as social creatures, see stories everywhere.[2]

Just as we tell ourselves stories about the world we live in, stories also tell us how to live. A myth is “a traditional story accepted as history that serves to explain the worldview of a people.”[3] Myths may be mistakenly dismissed as folktales from long ago, but even today a sea of stories tell us who we are, what to do, and what to believe.

People use stories to process the information we encounter from our families and upbringing, educational institutions, religious and cultural institutions, the media, our peers and community. We remember our lived experiences by converting them to narratives and integrating them into our personal and collective web of stories. Just as our bodies are made of blood and flesh, our identities are made of narratives.

2.2 Narrative Power Analysis

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Advance Praise for Re:Imagining Change
• Gratitude and Acknowledgements
• Epigraph
• 1. Introduction: The Power of Story
• Story-based Strategy Campaign Model
• 2. Narrative Power Analysis
• 3. Winning the Battle of the Story
• 4. Points of Intervention
• 5. Changing the Story
• 6. Facing the Ecological Crisis: A Call to Innovation
• Endnotes
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• About SmartMeme
• About the Authors
• ABOUT PM PRESS
• FRIENDS OF PM PRESS
• In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives
• Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult
• Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance
• Notes