Re:imagining Change: How to Use Story-Based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World

by Patrick Reinsborough, Doyle Canning, Jonathan Matthew Smucker (Foreword by)

Overview

Re:Imagining Change provides resources, theory, hands-on tools, and illuminating case studies for the next generation of innovative change-makers. This unique book explores how culture, media, memes, and narrative intertwine with social change strategies, and offers practical methods to amplify progressive causes in the popular culture.

Re:Imagining Change is an inspirational inside look at the trailblazing methodology developed by the Center for Story-based Strategy over fifteen years of their movement building partnerships. This practitioner’s guide is an impassioned call to innovate our strategies for confronting the escalating social and ecological crises of the twenty-first century. This new, expanded second edition includes updated examples from the frontlines of social movements and provides the reader with easy-to-use tools to change the stories they care about most.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629633848
Publisher:	PM Press
Publication date:	10/01/2017
Edition description:	Second Edition, Second edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Patrick Reinsborough is a social movement strategist, change agent, and creative provocateur with thirty years of experience. Patrick’s work has incorporated a range of creative strategies including brand busting, culture jamming, markets campaigning, and nonviolent direct action. He has helped organize countless creative interventions including the historic shutdown of the Seattle WTO meeting in 1999, protests against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and visionary alliance-building uniting North American communities impacted by fossil fuels. Patrick is the cofounder of the Center for Story-based Strategy (formerly smartMeme). He lives with his family in Oakland, CA.

Doyle Canning is cofounder of the Center for Story-based Strategy. She is a strategist, facilitator, and coach for social and ecological justice movements. She enjoys growing food and flowers and biking her two children around in a Dutch cargo bike. Doyle is a JD candidate at the University of Oregon School of Law and blogs at doylecanning.com

Jonathan Matthew Smucker is Director of Beyond the Choir and has worked for more than two decades as a grassroots political organizer and strategist. He is author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals.

Table of Contents

Story-based Strategy Campaign Model Chart xii

Foreword to the 2nd Edition xiii

Introduction to the 2nd Edition 1

I Why Story

1.1 The Narrative Animal 8

1.2 Hacking at the Roots 10

1.3 The Era of Outdated Stories 11

1.4 Movement as Narrative 13

1.5 From Improvement to Innovation 17

1.6 The Story-based Strategy Approach 19

II Narrative Power

2.1 Truth vs. Meaning 23

2.2 Narrative Thinking 26

2.3 Narrative Power Analysis 27

2.4 Setting the Frame 31

2.5 Designer Stories and the Branded World 33

2.6 Memes 36

2.7 Power and Mythology 39

2.8 People-Power and Narrative 40

2.9 Creation Myths of the United States 42

2.10 Control Myths & Memes 44

2.11 Narrative Filters 47

2.12 The Elements of Story 48

III Winning the Battle of the Story

3.1 Building on the Cornerstones 53

3.2 Beyond the Story of the Battle 57

3.3 The Battle of the Story 59

3.4 Framing the Conflict 62

3.5 Creating Narrative Frames 64

3.6 Amplifying Compelling Characters 67

3.7 The Drama Triangle 71

3.8 Imagery: Show, Don't Tell 73

3.9 Foreshadowing 76

3.10 Challenging Assumptions 79

3.11 Designing a Framing Narrative 82

3.12 Action Logic and Meta-Verbs 86

IV Points of Intervention

4.1 Social Change as Intervention 91

4.2 Point of Production 93

4.3 Point of Destruction 94

4.4 Point of Consumption 96

4.5 Point of Decision 97

4.6 Point of Assumption 98

4.7 Reframing Debates 100

4.8 Offering New Futures 103

4.9 Subverting and Creating Spectacles 105

4.10 Making the Invisible Visible 110

4.11 Repurposing Popular Culture Narratives 113

4.12 Brand-Busting 116

V Changing the Story

5.1 Strategic Improvisation 121

5.2 Case Study: Greenpeace: Save the Whales 123

5.3 Case Study: Rural Vermont 125

5.4 Case Study: Protect Our Waters 129

5.5 Case Study: Coalition of Immokalee Workers 133

5.6 Case Study: #Healthy Hoods 136

5.7 Case Study: Our Power: A New Climate Narrative 142

VI Navigating Crisis and Transition: A Call to Innovation

6.1 Beyond Talking Points 149

6.2 The Slow-Motion Apocalypse 151

6.3 Psychic Breaks 153

6.4 Turning Moments into Movements 155

6.5 Narrating Change 157

6.6 A Movement of Storytellers 160

Endnotes 163

Glossary 179

Further Reading 185

Gratitude and Acknowledgments 194

About CSS 197

About the Authors 198

Editorial Reviews

All around us the old stories are failing, crumbling in the face of lived experience and scientific reality. But what stories will replace them? That is the subject of this crucial book: helping readers to tell irresistible stories about deep change—why it is needed and what it will look like. The Story-based Strategy team has been doing this critical work for fifteen years, training an entire generation in transformative communication. This updated edition of Re:Imagining Change is a thrilling addition to the activist tool kit.”
—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

“This powerful and useful book is an invitation to harness the transformative power of stories by examining social change strategy through the lens of narrative. Re:Imagining Change is an essential resource to make efforts for fundamental social change more enticing, compelling, and effective. It’s a potent how-to book for anyone working to create a better world.”
—Ilyse Hogue, president, NARAL Pro-Choice America

“Brilliant and invaluable. George Lakoff introduced the progressive movement to the power of framing. Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough take framing to a far more powerful level and provide practical tools essential to the success of every progressive organization that seeks to bring forth a world of peace and justice. It gets my highest recommendation.”
—David Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

“We are surrounded and shaped by stories every day, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But what Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough point out is a beautiful and powerful truth—that we are all storytellers too. Armed with the right narrative tools, activists can not only open the world’s eyes to injustice, but feed the desire for a better world. Re:Imagining Change is a powerful weapon for a more democratic, creative and hopeful future.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy

“As an introduction to story-based strategy, the book offers organizers and advocates a new and necessary way to understand and transform the impact of stories on our public life.”
—Malkia Cyril, executive director, Center for Media Justice

From the Publisher