With authoritarianism, illiberalism, and toxic polarization on the rise, the imperative for human rights advocates to engage new allies is stronger than ever. In 2022, a consortium of organizers, academics, and philanthropists, including the authors of this article, launched the Narrative Engagement Across Difference (NEAD) project. We started with the hypothesis that strengthening our narrative competencies is key to breaking down silos and promoting greater solidarity and collective action. Drawing together applied research and experimentation, candid self-reflection, and shared practical experiences in very diverse contexts, we produced a series of NEAD tools and insights. Here we share our journey and some of the resources we developed.
We wanted to move beyond an understanding of narrative practice as a means for finding the “magic words” to make strategic communications more effective. Rather, we focused on narrative competencies that build and support deep relational infrastructures that allow a diversity of actors to join and contribute to our movements.
The narrative competencies needed to build a bigger tent
The NEAD project focused on narratives as meaning-making systems: stories that construct how we make sense of the world. For example, authoritarian, illiberal governments—and even liberal democracies—have often used the deep narrative of “security” to concentrate state and corporate power at the cost of freedoms and rights. A rhetoric of dehumanization, fear, and scarcity shapes a sense of threat that is leveraged to justify enhanced state and corporate power as a “common sense” response, such as in these states’ responses to migration and people on the move to justify investing in the expanding surveillance and security industry and measures to criminalize migrant solidarity and justice organizers. An accepting public acquiesces to or endorses state actions that flow from the security narrative. Strengthening our narrative competencies allows us to interrogate how such deep narratives (or meaning-making systems) may operate on us differently from others.
Research shows that successful pro-democracy movements include broad participation across identities, sectors, geographies, and ideologies. Building that level of diversity within a “big tent” pro-democracy effort requires identifying and engaging many different deep narratives. The project started with a crossdisciplinary literature review of all the ways narrative practices might strengthen or impede collaboration across difference. Then, we dug into three core competencies that underpin successful narrative engagement: Narrative Legitimacy (how narratives regulate and determine interactions among people), Narrative Power (the dynamics of decision-making in the narrative landscape), and Narrative Complexity (the capacity of any narrative to evolve and change).
Process lessons and international learnings
What started as a very broad, multi-disciplinary literature review needed to move quickly from theory to practice so that the NEAD team could focus on further developing the most essential insights. Through a series of convenings, workshops, presentations, and small-group salons with narrative practitioners from around the world, we realized that, to make our findings relevant, it was crucial to prioritize accessible language and start with organizers’ existing practices and lived experiences.
Some commentators have construed using narrative engagement practices to build a bigger tent as an updated way of thinking about effective organizing. But a posture of persuasion with the aim of getting more people to join an already formulated goal or political position is very different from a posture of engagement, which allows unlikely allies to incorporate their diverse ways of being and doing. In a moment of rising authoritarianism and anti-democratic forces, a posture of engagement—rethinking organizing models around more inclusive lines—is critical.
To expand our reach, we drew narrative practitioners from around the globe (India, Philippines, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, Spain, and the United States) into a “Friends of NEAD” cohort. This international learning community helped identify which practices were most useful, which narrative challenges we had in common, and which were context specific. We met online monthly to share and refine our diverse practices and feed into the development of NEAD’s tools. Most importantly, we created powerful bonds of cross-border solidarity that allowed participants to become stronger role models and advocates for narrative engagement practices in their own spheres of influence.
The insights that emerged from the Friends of NEAD sessions ranged widely. We saw the power of embodied narrative engagement in places like India, where working across differences in caste and religion created a new sense of shared dignity that didn’t come at the expense of “others.” We learned how engaging across the urban/rural divide within feminist movements and navigating deep cultural mores and traditions in places like Uganda revealed the contours of narrative power. We reflected on the narrative complexity of trans rights in countries like Spain, where successful efforts to shift the narrative terrain helped bring in new allies. And finally, we shared the importance of identifying narratives and strategies that could prove counterproductive.
NEAD resources
Four rich years of cross-context learning culminated in the creation of three main NEAD resources that we are excited to share:
As a baseline, we have produced an animated video and accompanying guide to thinking narratively designed for self-study or as part of a facilitated discussion with groups looking to pivot to a narrative engagement approach.
We also concluded that determining what lines of difference to engage requires first mapping the narrative terrain in which we operate. In response to this need, we developed a NEAD mapping tool that prioritizes self-reflection and personal meaning-making as a means of questioning assumptions and creating the conditions for unlikely allies to emerge. You can download the Narrative Landscape Mapping tool and accompanying podcast overview here.
Finally, we have found that one of the main challenges in working against authoritarianism and toxic polarization is how to counter their foundational narratives. To address this problem we have produced a compendium of strategic tensions and provocations (with accompanying examples from the US context) to help organizers determine the trade-offs of particular choices made in engaging with a hostile or unhelpful narrative. You can download the compendium here.
Conclusion
The NEAD project made it clear that we need to continue creating spaces for organizers and narrative practitioners to slow down, reflect together, experiment with different strategies, learn from what works, expand our circles, and adapt and pivot if necessary. These are the underpinnings of a narrative infrastructure that is both relational and durable.
Developing narrative competencies helps us notice how stories operate in the world and may shape our interactions. It helps uncover previously concealed stories, and it expands what we consider possible.
We look forward to receiving feedback on these resources and continuing to build community with everyone working to engage across difference and build collective power.
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The Narrative Engagement Across Difference (NEAD) Project was a four-year action learning initiative curated by The Horizons Project with support from the Fund for Global Human Rights.