Cultivate a Different Story

Belonging in the U.S. means the chance for all of us to live an abundant life, not just to dream or strive for one. What unites us is our commitment and practice of values of safety, care, and shared abundance.  

This narrative “destination” project took a different approach from much of the narrative work in the field by attempting to craft a story that aligns with who we hope to be in 20-30 years, to forecast a future narrative and work back from there to inform the stories that we tell about our work today and in the coming years. We seek to define and shape a new American identity that is a bigger, more resilient, and irresistible “we” that all of us can opt into.

Belonging in the U.S. means being honest about the truth of our painful pasts and embedding that truth as a core part of our shared identity. It’s how we understand what behaviors or ways of being do not belong. It’s also how we develop and sharpen how we can practice living the values we want in the future.

Many of our movements are focused on fighting for the short- and long-term transformers to institutions and structures we need to thrive. And, in order to change how we govern, who we govern for, and what our responsibility is to one another, we must reimagine who we are as people and reframe the stories we tell about ourselves. The findings of this research and the narrative frames and practices that accompany them are an attempt to begin that reimagining and transformation process.

This work is an experiment in creating a skeleton of the stories we tell about ourselves, each other, and belonging in the future America we are nurturing. We aim for these narratives to be malleable — useful as a package or in pieces, helpful to the formation of narrative strategy and messaging, versatile as a tray in the toolbox for campaigners, cultural institutions, and communicators that are developing a longer arc for their community-building and social-transformation work.