Story-based Strategies for Action Design
Multimedia presentation and training
with smartMeme
Monday, March 29, 7:30pm (free)
Streamed live for out-of-towners at http://livestream.com/notanalternative
Story telling is an ancient and powerful form of human expression. Today, however the power of story is mainly used by advertisers, PR flacks and political propagandists. In order to make change, social movements must tell new stories that challenge assumptions and shape new possibilities for action and change.
How can activist and artists use story-based strategies to design "image events": actions, images or stories that simultaneously destroy and construct new meaning? How can we either replace existing sets of symbols or re-define their meaning? Can we connect organizing struggles with the ethereal world of culture, media and narrative?
The story-based strategy approach is grounded in a narrative analysis of power––the recognition that humans understand the world and their role in it through stories and thus all power relations have a narrative component. 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.
Join Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough, cofounders of smartMeme and authors of Re:Imagining Change for a provocative, multi-media presentation and hands-on training that will explore the power of memes, creative action and new strategic frameworks for affecting social change and the transmission of culture.
