Deep Narratives Dive

The questions

1. What demand, energy or curiosity is there for deep narrative work?
2. What narratives in the world are working for us or against us?
3. What hunches do we have about deep narratives we might need?
4. Whose strategy and tactics can we learn from?
5. What principles might we hold together as we continue?

The day was explicitly not an attempt to devise a deep narrative that would work across all movements. It was a test of appetite and a first pooling of what the field already knows.

Working definition

The workshop used a simple distinction that has carried through the later work. A deep narrative is a powerful but usually hidden, values-based narrative that influences, bounds and limits the more visible narratives we live with day to day; it shapes the world by shaping implicit assumptions and closing off certain possibilities from even being considered. A meta narrative is the umbrella, high-level story that gives coherence between narratives; a deep narrative gives coherence underneath them, in the territory of mindsets, values, worldviews and ideologies, subconscious rather than conscious, implicit rather than explicit. Deep narratives were pictured sitting inside institutional and cultural hegemony, and reached through organising, pop culture, collective healing, media, political rhetoric and narrative practice.

What we heard

• There is clear demand and energy for deeper narrative work that can work across movements and issues.
• We are not starting from scratch; there is plenty to learn from, both precedents and narrative insight.
• To be effective the work has to span movements, funders and sectors.
• Keep asking “who’s not in the room?”, and centre diverse lived experience.
• “Routes to audience” are fundamental and need to be valued as such, in resource and in strategy.
• Coordination and collaboration with the ground level will be key.
• Work for the immediate and the long term simultaneously.

Mapping the landscape

Participants mapped the deep narratives they see at work, sorted into winds at our back, winds that could blow either way, and winds blowing us off course. A selection:

	Aiding	Either way	Hindering
Systems & power	Context matters, what surrounds us shapes us; realisation that systems don’t work for people; UK trust in the NHS and welfare state	The system is rigged; the political process serves capital	Individual responsibility; growth is always good; tech will save us; the perceived need to be impartial; “everything’s a bit shit” Britishness
Change	Change is underway and constant; now feels like a moment for change	The state is the vehicle for change; all we need is hope; things will turn out OK	There is no alternative; we’re incapable of change; activism as wokery and privilege; net zero as the only answer
Togetherness	Local and devolved power; care as a collective enterprise; grassroots and people power; solidarity beyond nation states; stewardship	Collectivism; unity; wholeness; there is such a thing as justice	Hyper-individualism; othering; forced to pick a side; there is no such thing as society; authoritarianism
Nature	Reconnection with the more-than-human world; listen to nature and indigenous wisdom; rights of nature; joy in complexity		Scarcity; survival of the fittest; we’re separate from each other and from nature
Humanity	Human nature as curious, caring, cooperative; humans succeeded through friendliness; we are unwell and must heal	Individual agency, harmful when used to ignore systemic issues	People are inherently ignorant and selfish; luck is unimportant, hard work pays off; fatalism

From this the room drew out a short list of deep narratives in contention: aiding, what surrounds us shapes us, change is a constant, stewardship, desire for reconnection with the more-than-human world, humans succeeded through friendliness; hindering, individual responsibility, there is no alternative, authoritarianism, we’re separate from each other and from nature, people are inherently ignorant and selfish; and, cutting either way, the system is rigged, things will be OK, wholeness, individual agency.

Hunches

Generating deep narratives wasn’t the aim, but the collective intelligence in the room was used to probe possibilities for narratives that could serve fair, thriving futures across UK movements. The hunches clustered around a few themes:

• Interdependence and the web of life — we are nature, nature has rights; what happens to one affects others; solidarity as recognition of a deeper shared humanity and membership of the web of life.
• Human nature as caring and collaborative — mutual aid is instinctive; when the chips are down we come together; when we work together we get things done; we are forced to live in a system that stops us being kind.
• Context over blame — what surrounds us shapes us; systems, context and resources matter, so don’t blame individuals.
• Reframing progress and the good life — away from getting rich, towards wellbeing, the freedom to have a safe future to thrive in, the freedom to live well together.
• Stewardship — be a good ancestor; a progressive local and national pride rooted in unions, mutual aid and culture, countering the sense that Brits are “a bit rubbish”.
• Plus the blunt versions: justice matters; don’t be a dick, just be a decent human; humans before nations.

Any future work in this space would need a proper narrative identification and development process; these are starting points, not findings.

Practice

After looking at precedents, participants pooled what they know about the practice of deep narrative work.

Precedents in the room ranged across UK campaigns (Vote Leave, Stop The Boats, This Girl Can, Kill The Bill, Time To Change, the Paralympics’ Superhumans), global campaigns (MAGA, the Zapatistas, Designated Driver, Argentina’s Green Wave, US marriage equality, We Make The Future’s Race Class Narrative) and narrative strategy efforts (Framing The Economy, Moving Mindsets, Messaging This Moment, Culture Hack Labs, Stories For Life, New Citizen Project, the Othering & Belonging Institute’s narrative strategy for belonging, the New Story Summit, The Long Time Project, Larger Us). Several were unpacked in more depth: US marriage equality’s decade of a single focused goal, coordinated funders, a shared “roadmap to victory”, pooled money and a tested shift from rights to love; the Race Class Narrative’s empirically tested formula, national coordination and funded content amplification; and the field-building, cultural-partnership and thought-leadership routes taken by Stories For Life, New Citizen Project, The Long Time Project and Larger Us. The list showed a range of approaches rather than a review of the field.

Strategy and tactics that recur. What: culture and pop culture; short, sharp, funny and engaging; tapping existing values and shifting them; shifting the Overton window; humour. Who: lived experience; diverse partners and voices; new storytellers and heroes in third spaces; grassroots and youth-led, with communities at the centre; giving a leg up to messengers and moments we have nothing to do with. How: shared principles; being honest about who leads; mining research that already exists; ongoing testing and iteration; thinking through a narrative’s long-term counter-effects (short-term nationalism, say); air game plus ground game, relational and on the doorstep; coordination and coalitions; big, long-term, unrestricted money; building our own spaces.

What’s missing. Funding that is unrestricted and long-term, and collaboration between wealth holders; more equal power distribution and access to decision-making spaces; flexible resourcing infrastructure that goes beyond organisations, hyperlocal news connected to independent media, and common, convergent, healing spaces; simplicity and a focused goal; deep analysis of communities and of what is actually succeeding; and activation — routes to market, a supportive media ecosystem, the right messengers, narratives that make us feel good, and content that lasts beyond campaign moments.

Tensions and questions. Success in deep narrative work may never feel like a moment when we win. Precarity, extraction and burnout. Policy change versus behaviour change; individual versus systemic change; short term versus long term. Do we value being right over creating change? Do you need a bogeyman? Impact is unclear and slow-burn, unlike social media success. How do movements continue outside capitalism when funded by capitalism, and where is the world-building capital and time? The Charity Commission and Lobbying Act; the impact of AI on the work.

Principles

The group’s principles for the day, and for journeying together afterwards: kindness rather than judgement; curiosity rather than being correct; honesty rather than holding back; acceptance of messiness rather than premature certainty; crew rather than passenger. Closing the day, each participant chose a travel object to stand for a principle to carry forward — among them a map (democratised knowledge), a plug (keep asking who’s in the room), sunglasses (be conscious of the white-supremacy lens we’re conditioned to see through), a cleansing wipe (healing damaging ideas for good, not a plaster), Russian dolls (healing intergenerational trauma to be good ancestors), a shell (going properly deep is high-pressure and confronting; pearls begin as grit), a torch (light but not too bright, feel your way as things emerge), a tea light (illuminate the research that already exists), a pencil (accessible to a five-year-old and an artist alike), socks (obvious practical utility) and sweets and a ball (energy, joy, playfulness without over-theorising).

Demand and energy

Asked what kind of deep narrative work is needed, the room named practice (breaking down silos, movement building, community power, global coordination, deep narrative research methods, escaping political cycles, embracing discomfort, making futures tangible), orientation (humanising; short and long term; working from lived experience; more emotion in climate) and content (morality over unity; tackling zero-sum, selfish assumptions; class-responsible frugal abundance; spreading connection). Asked what they had energy for, the answers leaned the same way: deep narrative exploration and research, more practice not just theory, connecting funders to the work, cross-movement relational infrastructure, keeping it deep, more voices, working with what’s already there, facilitating power at the margins, and identifying meaningful shared narratives at scale — the good life, Englishness, race–class–planet, this moment.