Future Narratives Lab
Making new
On many of the major social challenges we face, our ingrained conventional understandings and mental models, or ‘narratives’, limit the terms of debate, blocking the constructive consensus needed for effective action.
The Future Narratives Lab brings together experts from a range of backgrounds to analyse these existing narratives, design new alternatives, and create the strategies and partnerships to replace them.
Messaging & Framing
AI Messaging Guide for NEON
In collaboration with New Economy Organisers Network and other partners, we’ve been recently working on a Messaging Guide for progressive campaigners on Artificial Intelligence. As a rapidly evolving subject, its a living document which will update and change over time, but we hope it represents an important first step in pushing back against corporate frames of inevitability and fear that have dominated recent discussion. Have a look, and do let us know your thoughts and feedback – we are aiming to produce additional content in this area soon.
Our work
Shifting Narratives
Work with partners to analyse & understand existing dominant narratives that impede social change, and design approaches and strategies to replace them.
Messaging & Framing
Based on research & analysis, create approaches and guidance to enable more consistently effective strategic communications and creative outputs.
Creative & Testing
Develop and test prototype materials and narrative approaches across multiple mediums and formats, and use the findings to continuously update and improve.
Narrative project
With land we can: changing the narrative of land in the UK
What would take to shift the way we think about land in the UK, and to recognise its crucial role at the intersection of our many social and economic challenges?
Working with Shared Assets and Land in Our Names, with support from the Emerging Futures Fund of the National Lottery Community Fund, the Lab has been working to design the beginnings of a new narrative for land in the UK, as the basis for more productive social action.
You can see the outputs of this work by watching the short film opposite, reading the article linked below, and accessing our earlier report on the current land narrative, further down this page.
Recent Report Launch
How to Disagree Better About Education – new report
Education debates in the UK today are dominated by binary and divisive framings, that crowd out the true variety of perspectives and philosophies in play. In this new report with the PSHE Association, we aim to surface this diversity, with the aim of supporting more constructive discussion and debate.
Public event
Memes, Myths & Existential Art: The Far Right & The End of the World
What can we learn from the nature of the materials and memes that have been a feature of far right discourse? What are the underlying narratives and myths that unite the very different types of far-right media, how do they function, and what are their foundational ideas? At this event in November 2021 we were joined by:
- Michael Colborne, a journalist who has written extensively about the far right, and manager of the Bellingcat Monitoring Project
- Kate Davis, Chief of Staff at Moonshot, a social enterprise working to end online harms
- Navneet Gidda, Associate at the Future Narratives Lab and Communications Manager at the Cambridge Centre for AI & Medicine
Public event
Escape from humanity: the narratives behind Big Tech
In 2021 we held a session exploring the narratives that have shaped the technology platforms now playing a greater role than ever in our culture and society. We were joined by:
- Dr Kanta Dihal – Senior Research Fellow and project lead of the Global AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge
- Jeannette Estruth, Assistant Professor of American History at Bard College, Faculty Associate at the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
- Michael Sacasas, Editor The Convivial Society, Author of the ‘The Frailest Thing: 10 years of thinking about technology’
- Daniel Stanley, Founder & CEO – Future Narratives Lab