Narrative & Cultural Change
The past several years have felt heavy, filled with seemingly insurmountable challenges beyond our time, resources, and capacity. These obstacles have coincided with climate crises and a global rise in authoritarianism—a trend that is not only intensifying the threat environments that we’re collectively living in, but also targeting, challenging, and testing social justice movements around the world in unparalleled ways.
But are we actually as stuck as it feels? What if we could build the world we need and seed a brighter future, not only for us but for everyone who comes after us? What if we could lean into possibility and reimagination? As Sikh civil rights leader and activist, Valarie Kaur, audaciously asked during her 2016 Watch Night Service:
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead, but a country that is waiting to be born? What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?”
While the circumstances we are living and working in are daunting, the dream of birthing multi-racial democracies is still possible—a world where power lies not with governments or corporations, but with working people. As movements and social justice leaders have shown us for generations, even in our darkest chapters, working people can organize, mobilize, and build long-term, durable power that creates the conditions necessary so that everyone can lead free, equitable, and self-determined lives.
One of the key strategies that social justice leaders and movements around the world have utilized is narrative and cultural change. In an era rife with misinformation, division, and isolation, how can cultural organizing and change strategies catalyze institutional, systemic, and political change? How do we build narrative power to better tell the stories of everyday working people and our long-term vision for collective liberation? How can narrative powerbuilding and cultural organizing help create the conditions necessary to seed transformational change?
The Offering
In this area of my practice, I seed cultural, institutional, systemic, & political change via writing, podcasting, and strategy work on narrative powerbuilding and cultural organizing. I do this work alongside artists, organizers, progressive non-profits & philanthropic institutions, and social justice-oriented companies & brands. Collaborations and potential work could include:
Narrative & Cultural Change Strategy
Narrative Powerbuilding & Cultural Organizing Strategy
Convening & Imaginative Gathering Strategy
Writing
Podcasts & Interviews