How do you make progress when the loudest public discourse is stacked against you?
Across the world, hard-won rights are being rolled back – and behind that rollback is a battle over culture: over the stories, values, and assumptions that shape what feels normal, desirable, or possible.
For too long, our influencing has been focused on policies, providing only short term gains that can be quickly lost, as we are seeing across the world today. Narrative campaigning starts further upstream. Instead of asking ‘how do we get people to support our policy’ it asks ‘how do we help create a culture in which the change we want becomes possible?’ By building and spreading stories that connect emotionally, reflect people’s values and show an alternative worldview, narrative campaigning can help create the cultural conditions in which advocacy, mobilisation and fundraising become more effective.
In this session, Forward Action will explore what it means to campaign for cultural change rather than an immediate action: identifying the deeper narratives shaping an issue; deciding which audiences can help shift the cultural dial; developing stories and frames that can travel beyond your existing supporter base; and finding the messengers and spaces that can help make those ideas visible in everyday life.
We’ll also look at what this demands from organisations in practice. Narrative power cannot be built through one viral piece of content, one organisation or one communications channel. It requires long-term investment, testing and learning; working with creators, communities and trusted messengers; and collaborating with others who are trying to shift the same underlying cultural stories. We’ll share reflections from the work so far, including the tensions involved in reaching beyond the people who already agree with us, measuring change that cannot be captured in a click, and resisting the instinct to simply rebut the narratives we oppose.
Learning outcomes
- Understand how narrative power creates public permission for change and why engagement alone is not a reliable indicator of progress
- Learn a practical approach to developing, testing, and refining narratives, including how to identify priority audiences, assess emotional resonance, and spot narratives that backfire or polarise
- Gain tools to apply narrative campaigning in your own contexts, helping you to rebuild legitimacy, protect long-term trust, and create the conditions for effective advocacy and mobilisation