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 enough, often via pop culture, they become the meta-narrative, or the dominant narrative. That becomes the lens from which we see and understand the world around us. We make judgements and decisions, choose behaviors and reactions, and define who is part of ‘us’ through these dominant narratives.
The Lab is designed to help shift the narrative landscape for Canadian Muslims through pop culture. We understand that to shift that landscape we need new narratives to overcome the old. Infrastructure is needed for these stories to reach pop culture audiences, and power and resources are required to shift narratives. Since launching the Lab, we have been building our connections with individuals and organizations throughout North America who work at the intersections of narrative-building, and Muslim and BIPOC pop culture.
Based on our work to date, we have identified three areas of focus:
- Develop and design new Muslim narratives
- Define and understand audiences
- Build and shift narrative power
In July, we will welcome a Lab Cohort of Canadian Muslim creatives and practitioners who will work together to define and develop new Muslim narratives. The Cohort is by invitation. To support this priority, we recently welcomed two consultants to help design and facilitate the program.
We’ll be sharing more frequent updates along the way. We’ve also been working on the visual identity of the Lab and are excited to unveil that in the next couple of months with an official launch. Stay tuned.
Written by Angie Balata | April 21, 2022
