new stories for a different world
Effective strategies for social transformation involve the contest for how we think, how we see, and the stories we tell about our world. New stories, new thinking, help new worlds come into being. This training aims to help our movements to tell better stories for a different world.
We witness the power of narrative and story on a daily basis. Division and hatred are spread by the rightwing press, and sometimes by politicians. The issues of the day are quickly framed on social media. Historical stories provide deep undercurrents of understanding of our national and global psyches. And, within this ecosystem, our movements are also telling stories of need and despair, hope and change: think Greta and the school strikers, campaigners for marriage equality, or the Movement for Black Lives.
But how can we be sure that the stories we are telling—the way we are communicating the issues we care about—are effective? How do we know that they are catching people’s attention, engaging, motivating, building our movements for change, and ultimately creating change?
The training will focus on the role of framing in work on climate justice and tackling the rise of the far right in Europe.
In the training, we’ll explore the process for developing effective narratives. We’ll demystify the terms around story, framing and narrative and take a whistle-stop tour through the theory behind the framework. And we’ll move through developing a vision, understanding the narrative landscape, and creating and testing new routes through this landscape.
In detail, the training will cover:
Developing vision
Understanding the narrative landscape
Developing new frames
Testing frames
The training will be participatory and practical throughout.
Participants can expect to gain:
“It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”
—Ben Okri, Author
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
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Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación
