In April 2022, we invited two consultants to collaborate with us on the development of a five-month program for a Cohort of Muslim creatives and content creators to collaboratively design and develop a Muslim narrative system. The Cohort program, developed and designed by Sameena Eidoo and facilitated by Rabiah Ahmed, is a series of narrative … Continued
Below is a list of terms and their definitions, as used throughout the Lab: Message: Hashtags, slogans, ideas, and taglines that serve as reminders of what we think and how we might choose to act. They are most often used in the context of campaigns and strategic communications. The best of them become narratives. [1] … Continued
Stories are fascinating and curious things we’ve passed down through generations since forever. They hold fragments we make up about ourselves in fantastical characters and journeys, but also little parcels of truth about where we come from and who we are. Stories have a special kind of allure—they give us the bits and pieces that … Continued
Labs can go many different ways. We’ve spent a lot of time building a model that we think will work. We know the landscape, or “ocean”, needs an entirely different outcome. And our start is the Narrative Change Lab. To develop the foundations for the Lab, we explored four critical questions: What do current … Continued
Setting out to clearly define our Lab has been tricky, but necessary. We work with narratives, but what defines a “narrative? “What is a “narrative system?” For the purpose of our Lab, we have adopted definitions from Race Forward’s Butterfly Lab. We view narratives as, “An array of related and connected stories and messages … Continued
The current landscape for Muslims in Canada is dominated by bad narratives. We approach narratives as a collection of thousands of interconnected stories that together tell us how we should feel, view, and relate to a specific subject, person, and community. Narratives are recognizable to both individual and society because when repeated and sustained long … Continued
Developing the Narrative Change Lab has not been an easy process. The ideas and timelines we began with have been set aside for something unlike what we imagined. The Lab has expanded and is now made up of three parts collectively focused on (1) creating and developing (new) narratives, (2) investing in research and (3) studying audiences. We have been challenged to dig deep and … Continued
It’s been four months since we began our work in the Narrative Change Lab. Our plan for the Lab has been to develop it in phases, while intentionally integrating different narrative approaches and theories, building networks of consultation and exchange, and inviting allies, supporters, and stakeholders into each part of the process. This initial phase … Continued
