Heroes’ Narrative

Progressives too often lead campaign messages with facts, policy abstractions or the problem itself, losing the public’s attention and failing to move anyone to action. The solution is to ground our campaign communications in the heroic stories of real people taking action to defend our shared values. We must begin engaging our base through storytelling if we want to change hearts and minds and increase civic participation. This training goes a couple steps beyond the “story of self, us, now” and explores how a collection of stories can create a lasting narrative and shape public opinions beyond one campaign.

The Heroes’ Narrative is a communications tool that was created in Washington state to unite the progressive community around a shared narrative, led by values-based messages and heroic stories.

To date, the Engage Michigan staff has successfully trained over 200 individuals from a wide range of age groups and issue organizations across Michigan on how to understand the key elements of an epic story, be thinking about how they can apply the learned story structure to their issues, and utilize evidence based narrative elements in progressive messaging.

Interested in learning how you can begin telling a story about your campaign, issue, or organization to change hearts and minds? Send us an email and we’ll be in touch.

Skills

Posted on

October 3, 2015