Explore selected resources covering diverse aspects of narrative work and find practical tools speaking to your specific narrative interests and needs.
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7 results
A Guide to Hope-based Communications
2019
Available in English, Spanish, Thai
The strategic communication manual is designed to help human rights advocates shift from fear-based messaging to a more empowering, solution-oriented narrative. Developed with Thomas Coombes, the guide outlines five key shifts: focusing on solutions rather than problems, emphasizing what we stand for instead of what we oppose, creating opportunities for action, highlighting everyday heroes, and reinforcing a sense of agency with the message “we’ve got this.” By rooting communication in shared values and a vision for a better future, the guide aims to inspire hope, counter cynicism, and reframe public discourse to favor human rights progress.
Be the Narrative – How changing the narrative could revolutionize what it means to do human rights
by Just Labs and The Narrative Space
2019
Available in English
The report focuses on a shift in the narrative of human rights work and how tactical, organisational, and field-wide changes are needed to get the new narrative right and thus, to revolutionize the meaning of human rights work. It highlights new narrative responses on populist strategies, namely culture as response to controversy, cooperation towards crisis, and the narrative of community towards conflict.
How to Message on The Rights of People From Marginalized Groups: A Communications Guide for Organisations Promoting Human Rights
by Civil Liberties Union for Europe
2023
Available in English
This guide is a tool for organisations in the human rights sector that want to communicate more effectively with the public to build
support for human rights-related causes. This includes civil society organisations, foundations, international organisations and national bodies promoting human rights.
The advice in the present guide relates primarily to how to speak to a moveable middle audience among the majority population. That is, an audience who does not, at first glance, consider themselves to be directly affected by the harms inflicted on the marginalised group in question. Put otherwise, the guide is more about how communicators can persuade the ‘majority’ population to support equality for marginalised groups than about mobilising people from the marginalised group.
Narrative Spices: An Invitational Guide for Flavorful Human Rights
by The Fund for Global Human Rights & Just Labs
2022
Available in English and French
The guide is an invitation to self-refection and creative practice for human rights advoca-tes who are interested in narrative change.
Safeguarding Civic Space: Harnessing Narrative Change to Restore Public Trust in CSOs
by International Centre for Policy Advocacy
2024
Available in English
In an era of shrinking civic space, civil society organisations (CSOs) find themselves under immense pressure, contending with a barrage of legal measures and narrative attacks aimed at undermining and vilifying them. Against this backdrop of democratic backsliding, the guide serves as a proactive resource, to move past commenting on the erosion of democracy to empowering actors to defend and promote civic rights effectively.
Crafted from first-hand experience and extensive research, the guide offers 10 practical lessons for proactive narrative change. Drawing from successful campaigns around the globe, including in-depth insights from a locally-led CSO coalition in Kazakhstan and efforts to counter 'foreign agents' laws in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan, these lessons provide actionable strategies to restore trust in CSOs with sceptical middle audiences.
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