Davide Abbatescianni in Cineurope of 1 October 2021 describes the panel “Storytelling and Activism” in which the speakers explored how powerful storytelling can help activists in their struggles, and how this can become a catalyst for social change
A moment during the panel discussion
On 23 September, the Human Rights Film Festival hosted a panel entitled “Storytelling and Activism”. The gathering, which ran in Berlin from 16-25 September, aims to inspire and educate its attendees, opening their eyes to several humanitarian issues, as seen from new perspectives.
The panellists at this session explored how storytelling can help activists in their fights against injustice and human rights violations, and how this can become a catalyst for social change. The talk saw the participation of actress-director Katja Riermann (whose film …and here we are! was part of this year’s festival programme), Amnesty International Germany secretary general Markus Beeko, Save the Children communication director Martina Dase, co-host of feminist podcast Mothers of Invention Thimali Kodikara, campaigner Uma Mishra and Nigerian-American director Adesua Okosun. The conversation was moderated by Anna Ramsklogler-Witt.
Riermann spoke about her approach to storytelling, saying that she always tries to find the story “behind the news, behind what we know from the humanitarian organisations. […] I try to close the gap between what we know generally – and in many cases, such information is false – and the very specific, exclusive information provided by the people who are within this bubble. My approach is to tell the story to people who are not part of this bubble, who have never heard about it,” she explained.
Okosun said, “Luckily, a lot of directors and creators have the freedom to express themselves through storytelling and to not be afraid to seek questionable stories.” They don’t fear telling the stories of communities that everyone is ignoring or the experiences in Africa that many try to sugar-coat.
Dase noted a lack of meaningful stories: “I think storytelling is the art of telling something that gets under your skin. We still need to be more courageous, and we need to stop telling similar stories over and over again. People are tired of this.” She then mentioned that the most successful piece of storytelling ever produced by Save the Children was a viral video (watch it here) made in collaboration with an advertising agency. It was not a case study, but it basically transposed the Syrian War to London, showing a nine-year-old girl celebrating her birthday when, all of a sudden, a civil war breaks out in the UK. “We need to work more with suspense, surprise, shock and mystery – all of those skills that advertising agencies and blockbuster directors possess,” she added.
Speaking about how humour can be a powerful storytelling tool for just causes, Kodikara said that it allows us “to bring new audiences towards subjects that they are usually terrified of or know nothing about”.
Mishra discussed how emotions can have an impact on her campaigning work: “Working with human rights defenders is always incredibly tricky because of how you are portraying their stories.” She said that it is important to remember that the voices of these people – women, minorities, political prisoners and so on – have been silenced, so activists and campaigners need to make sure not to co-opt their voices and handle their portrayals, as far as possible, with the utmost care.
Beeko highlighted the shift from “telling stories about human rights violations and those affected by them” to a focus on the “activists and the changes that are possible”, which gives hope but is also stimulating more active modes of participation on the part of the audience.
James Savage in Open Global Rights talks about how aligning principles with practice, addressing the power dynamics of collaboration, and nurturing an ecosystem for narrative power can help narrative work succeed.
…As the program officer for the Enabling Environment Program at the Fund for Global Human Rights, I support human rights defenders to counter a burgeoning conservative and authoritarian worldview by weaving new narratives of humanity and hope. For the past two years, I have had the joy of working with JustLabs’ Narrative Hub project, as we accompany a cohort of four human rights groups in four different countries on a journey to explore the value, tools, and tactics of successful narrative-building.
A year ago (and one year into the process with JustLabs), I shared some initial thoughts and assumptions about ways that funders might support this kind of strategic communications and narratives work. As a narrative novice, my continued apprenticeship has offered me a reminder of how important and effective it is as funders to align our principles and practice—to be our own narrative. In the spirit of open accountability, here I offer a few reflections on the “glows and grows” I’ve experienced accompanying this work over the last year—and how we, as funders, could equip this exciting, emergent field for long-term success.
I took my cue from narrative trailblazers such as ReFrame Mentorship and early funders of strategic communications work like the Thomas Paine Initiative. Based on that, I’ve striven to align principles and practice by embracing uncertainty and flexibility, as well as by elevating processes, learning over product and impact, shifting power, building trust, and collaborating authentically. Easy for me to say, but harder to do when faced with the perceptions and reality of funder power dynamics. Particularly, my experience has highlighted the difference in and connection between narrative as process and narrative as product, and how those dynamics shape the expectations and outputs of the funder-grantee relationship.
After nine months spent working with each group to incubate their narrative prototypes through research and testing, we had reached an important review point. Then COVID-19 hit.
Unable to meet in person, we recognized an opportunity to bring new creativity to both our (now online) workshops and our project’s reflection process. Although our idea—to dispense with the standard grantee-funder report and invest in more of a story-led self-reflection—had been percolating before the onset of COVID-19, the fallout of the pandemic presented a chance to operationalize this novel approach to reporting. Allowing this shift in the relationship between funder and partner relieved ourselves of the product-driven parameters we often operate in and allowed us to instead celebrate the process of experimentation and learning.
From the outset of this initiative, JustLabs and the Fund have supported, encouraged, and created processes for our partners to help them see that for narrative work to be sustainable, it can’t just be a project or product—it must be integral to their organization’s DNA and built into its system.
The power dynamics of partnership
A second reality check came in critiquing the power dynamics of partnership. Despite our best efforts to foster a participatory spirit of collaboration, there remains the uncomfortable truth that each of us still feels somewhat beholden to others’ expectations—activist to accompanier, accompanier to funder, funder to donor.
With our funding, the four groups wanted to explore new, creative ways of doing narrative work by aiming for ambitious prototypes that may, in fact, have been out of step with their everyday work and core capacity. For our part, we needed to see some level of consistency and coherence in the work across four countries while ensuring that it was shaped by context and driven by the interests and capacity of each of the four groups.
In working on this together, I have—imperfectly, I’m sure—tried to walk the line between sharing my ideas and resisting my instinct to solve. For instance, to help one partner meet its concern at over-burdening their in-house communications capacity, we offered additional resources so they had the option to engage an external design agency if they wished. Such active accompaniment has power written all over it—it takes a confident grantee or one with a strong relationship of trust to turn down their funder’s suggestion/offer. But rather than avoid it entirely and lose the benefits that come from thought partnership, co-creation, and shared learning, I wonder if we can better surface and own the forms of power at play to enable stronger collaboration between funders and grantees.
One way we—JustLabs and the Fund—tried to do that was to join our grantees in being interviewed by Rebecca Lichtenfeld, our ally storyteller, so as to also take part in the reflection process. Then, in the spirit of mutual accountability, we summarized and shared our own learning with the four groups, inviting our grantees to further help us define our collective learning process. There is much more to do here, as Panthea Lee has suggested—addressing the power dynamics of co-creation and partnership demands real intentionality.
Nurturing collective narrative power – a challenge for funders
This brings me to my third key reflection from the past year, derived both from my work with the Narrative Hub and from illuminating interactions with narrative veterans. As the points above reflect, my take on power has been mostly internal—focused on navigating the power infused in my relationships. As I think about the sustainability of this process, I realise that it is equally important to nurture the collective narrative power of partners with their peers and allies, rooted in shared values and visions. A critical question for our next year of work together, is whether we are providing the resources and accompaniment that best enables them and their allies to do that.
As Rashad Robinson has explained, narratives that help change the norms and rules that secure economic, climate, racial, gender, and other forms of social justice will come through “equipping a tight network of people organizing on the ground and working within various sectors to develop strategic and powerful narrative ideas, and then, against the odds of the imbalanced resources stacked against us, immerse people in a sustained series of narrative experiences required to enduringly change hearts, minds, behaviors, and relationships.”
As funders, we must act thoughtfully in how we help create such an ecosystem for narrative power. How we show up and how we do narrative work matters just as much as what we do and what we produce. We must center an accompaniment approach that aligns principles and process, starts from the real-world reality and goals of our partners, and invests in the infrastructure movements need to build and sustain their narrative power.
This article is a part of a collection by JustLabs and the Fund for Global Human Rights on bringing narrative initiatives to life in human rights work.
On 23 July 2020 Front Line Defenders launched the first edition of a very interesting new Monthly Digital Magazine:“Cypher – Comics as Eyewitness”.
This project advances the organization’s storytelling and narrative framing work in collaboration with and in support of human rights defenders (HRDs). Working with artists from around the world, including the awardwinning visual storyteller, Beldan Sezen, as creative director, the Magazine will be a monthly publication featuring 3 or 4 stories of HRDs and the challenges they face. Each month, Front Line Defenders will collaborate with comics artists from around the world, pairing them with HRDs to develop stories that portray their work and the challenges, risks and threats they face. The first edition features stories from: Kenya (artist: Nomes Dee) – a profile of Ruth Mumbi’s efforts to defend the rights of evicted families in the Kairobangi neighborhood of Nairobi as the COVID-19 pandemic spread; [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2015/01/22/human-rights-defenders-in-york-programme-tell-their-story-ruth-mumbi/] Pakistan (artist: anonymous for security reasons) – the story of the abduction enforced disappearance of Pakistani HRD Idris Khattak, as told from the perspective of his daughter; Lebanon (artist: Pascale Ghazaly) – with COVID-19 hitting, ongoing street protests against political and economic corruption and the collapse of the economy, Ethiopian domestic workers found themselves kicked out and abandoned, as even the embassy refused to help; a collective of domestic workers organized critical support; Brazil (artist: Lyvia Emanuelly ) – transvesti HRD Rosa Luz is a social media and YouTube influencer and rap/hip hop musician; when she used her art to criticize political leaders, she faced intense backlash in the media and from politicians, including death threats, only returning to her public role after a hiatus to ensure her security.
On October 3rd, Justice and Peace Netherlands together with Juni Café in Het Nutshuis will host the first edition of JUSTdish (or geRECHT in Dutch), a series of storytelling dinners featuring human rights activists from around the world.
The storytelling dinner, a 6-course meal prepared by environmentally-conscious Juni Café, will take the audience on a journey to Colombia and Venezuela through the eyes of two journalists working on the front line of human rights. Throughout six courses, the audience will learn about the important work of human rights defenders, their lives, and their countries of origin through stories and the food served.
About JUSTdish / geRECHT
The vision behind JUSTdish stems from the idea to bring people together, not only to enjoy food from countries around the world, but to learn more about human rights. By offering human rights defenders an informal platform to talk about their work, we hope to create more awareness and respect for the valuable work of human rights activists here in the Netherlands and bring to light the risk and dangers these brave activists encounter while defending the rights and freedoms of others.
New Tacticsis organizing podcast conversations on the potential of podcasting in human rights activism and the power of narrative storytelling. Hosted by Gianna Brassil. Podcasts are downloadable episodes of audio content, typically part of a series on a thematic topic. Over the past few years, podcasts have grown into a dynamic media form, with niche shows catering to listeners’ political, cultural, educational, musical, and technological audio palate. While podcasts are often produced by professional radio stations, they can also be created independent media creators. The freelance nature of podcasts makes them a unique tool for activists who want to broaden the audience of their message through a low-cost means.
New Tactics created its own podcast that explores issues of representation, the value of oral storytelling, and accessibility in creating independent media. The tension between a podcast’s entertainment value and the representation of human suffering is a topic that we grapple with in our podcast. We ask questions about how we can create stories that are honest and empathetic, meanwhile knowing that sometimes it is impossible to “create comprehensible stories out of the incomprehensible” (That the World May Know, James Dawes). Our podcast guests also discuss the uniqueness of voices and oral storytelling as tools to re-humanize conflicts and highlight the experiences of individual human lives. Finally, we discuss the accessibility of podcasts. With a microphone, simple audio editing software like Adobe Audition or Garageband, and an online platform such as Soundcloud to distribute episodes, activists can reach countless potential listeners. The power of becoming a media creator cannot be underestimated, and this episode seeks to demonstrate how media creators have the ability to reshape the landscape of representation, define for themselves what it means to be a human rights activist, and nuance an audience’s conception of how human rights stories can be told.
“Yes there is!” according to True Heroes Films (THF)
A recent assessment of the communication practice of Geneva-based human rights organisations carried out by THF showed that many of them face the same challenges.
The guidelines are by necessity of a general nature and are based on the experience of NGOs in the Geneva area, but they they may help also others in thinking about their communications problems: Read the rest of this entry »
On October 3rd, 
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 