The Narrative Hub

JustLabs and the Fund for Global Human Rights

The Narrative Hub was an initiative launched jointly by JustLabs and the Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR) to create space, funding, and support to integrate narrative ideas and research into human rights work around the world. 

For several years, we worked with teams in Venezuela, Hungary, Mexico, and Australia to explore research on narratives, imagine creative changes in their practice, and experiment with bringing those ideas to life.

 

Through this process of experimentation, we came to think about the question of narrative change differently. Changing narratives out in the world, we argue, is not just a matter of defining better narrative recipes, but of nurturing creativity and reflection in the cooks themselves.

Narrative Spices: an invitational guide for flavorful human rights tells the story of this initiative. Rather than offering recipes for new narratives, this guide invites people working for social change to reflect on and play with the flavors they use and their own habits in the human rights kitchen. Rooted in the experimental work of the different teams, this document offers six “spice blends” that invite practitioners to ask: what’s in my spice box for social change? 

Happy cooking!

 

NARRATIVE SPICES
An invitational guide

Read the guide: 
English  |  Español  |  Français

NARRATIVE SPICES
Interviews

Read the interviews: 
English  |  Español  |  Français

 

For more reflections, lessons, and learnings from and for this work, see the articles below.

 


 

Narrative practice: moving from recipes to spices

By: Lucas Paulson
Español

The invitation at the heart of "Narrative Spices" isn’t about specific strategies or approaches, but about cultivating habits that enable curiosity, exploration, ...

Putting words into action: personal reflections on supporting narrative change

By: James Savage
Español | Français

How aligning principles with practice, addressing the power dynamics of collaboration, and nurturing an ecosystem for narrative power can help narrative work succeed.

When your oven breaks: new recipes from virtual workshops

By: Ishtar Lakhani & Lucas Paulson
Español | Français

Online spaces offer new opportunities to support creative experimentation in human rights work—but taking them seriously doesn’t have to mean being too serious.

Finding meaning in organizational reflection

By: Sean Luna McAdams
Español | Français

If true reflection is a process and a habit then we, human rights practitioners and funders, need to focus less on the output (a written report) and more on the ...

How can the human rights community respond to severe political polarization?

By: James Logan
Español | Français

Severe political polarization is tearing at the seams of democracies around the world, with dangerous consequences for our societies, institutions, and human rights.

Be the narrative: How embracing new narratives can revolutionize what it means to do human rights

By: Krizna Gomez & Thomas Coombes
Español | Français | العربية

An experimental, hands-on narrative change initiative shows how even small civil society organizations can wield pragmatic, activity-based narrative strategies ...

New year, new human rights narratives?

By: James Logan
Español

Within the human rights community, there is a growing enthusiasm for new narratives to build public support for human rights. But creating a new narrative is about ...

 
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