Philanthropy has often conflated narrative change work with strategic communications, one-directional communications campaigns or story projects that may have short-term effects but fail to transform cultural norms. Instead, narrative change means shifting our worldview. As Pop Culture Collaborative’s Bridgit Antoinette Evans shares, narratives are all around us, “influencing everything about how we live, see and think about ourselves in the world.” Narrative change involves the creation of a new story and communicating that story to audiences in ways that resonate with them, putting the new narrative into practice, and evaluating the efforts of that narrative shift and adapting it accordingly. The goal is to transform “the ecosystems of narratives, ideas and cultural norms that shape the behaviors, mindsets and worldviews of millions of people” – to transform “whole narrative oceans.”

Join Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) and narrative change experts for this session to explore strategies philanthropy can employ to more effectively support the efforts of the immigrant justice movement to build a consensus for a vision of a world that works for all of us. We will address the different components of narrative change, including narrative networks and narrative organizing. Join us to learn how funders can help advance efforts to establish and deploy the narrative that everyone has the right to dignity, safety and freedom to thrive, regardless of where they were born.