What goes into story-based strategy?

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For an in-depth look at story-based strategy, check out Re:Imagining Change by Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough

Storytelling has always been central to the work of organizers and movement builders. Narrative is the lens through which humans process the information we encounter, be it cultural, emotional, experiential, or political. We make up stories about ourselves, our histories, our futures, and our hopes.

Story-based strategy provides a participatory framework for social change alliances to integrate messaging and movement building. Our methodology builds long-term social movement leadership to capture the public imagination and frame the debate. The Center for Story-based strategy (formerly smartMeme) has a decade of success training leaders to change the story in the news media, the halls of power, in social networks, and in everyday people-to-people conversations. 

Story-based strategy is grounded in a narrative power analysis. Every issue already has a web of existing stories and cultural assumptions that frame public understanding. Story-based strategy provides a process to understand the current story around an issue and identify opportunities to change that story with the right framing, messages, messengers and creative interventions.