Storytelling and the narrative change field in Latin America and the Caribbean

An overview of the region's ecosystem

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Courage, curiosity, and innovation are not lacking among storytellers in Latin America and the caribbean. But how does this work in practice? What do we know about organizations and initiatives that are telling new stories, changing narratives, and amplifying voices in this part of the world? What challenges do they face, and what are they achieving? How do they organize themselves? How do they plan and operate? building knowledge about the region's ecosystem is essential if the field is to further enhance its capacity to create social change.

By listening to 33 partner organizations of the Open Society Foundations in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica, Barbados, and El Salvador, this survey, conducted by iris, gathered qualitative information that provided us with a local overview. We hope our results will be useful to players in the field itself as well as partners, and funders.

What we studied:

Organizational capacity and best practices
Learnings in recent years
Challenges faced
Strategy and theories of change
Planning and evaluation practices

Findings

Context

How do the participating organizations perceive the latin american and caribbean context of impact storytelling, and how does it impact them?

The field

What exactly does the field of narrative change and storytelling refer to?

The definition of the storytelling and narrative change field is diffuse and many do not feel part of it. Several participants considered this research to be a learning experience about the ecosystem.

Opportunities and Threats

There are contextual factors that enhance or hinder the achievements of the ecosystem in the region.

An established field of independent media
High advocacy capacity of civil society to influence decision-making processes

Disinformation
Polarization
The monopoly of big techs
Generational gaps

Reasons-For-Being

The participating organizations have at least one of these four reasons-for-being as their guiding star:

1

Diversifying voices (strengthening and expanding spaces for black, indigenous, amazonian, and people living in peripheral areas*)

Despite the remarkable expansion of diverse voices, the role of indigenous peoples, quilombolas**, and people living in peripheral areas* continues to be fragile within the ecosystem. Funders play a strategic role in providing support to these groups, creating learning spaces, and expanding opportunities.

*Peripheral areas: People residing in favelas and outskirts, often affected by the lack of public policies on housing, basic sanitation, and infrastructure. Self-declared by research participants, this term indicates a shared social experience that involves a set of symbolic representations related to class, ethnicity, place of residence, and living conditions.

**Quilombolas: People descended from communities formed by enslaved individuals who resisted slavery and oppression. These are communities fighting for the recognition of their ancestral territories and for the guarantee of their territorial, social, economic, and cultural rights.

2

Strengthening the autonomy of individuals and communities participating in democratic processes

3

Changing or lifting up narratives

4

Influencing public policies and decision-makers

Practices

We highlight practices described as established by the participants in the region that are intended to be maintained and deepened by the organizations in the coming years.

Practices that strengthen the process of developing and producing quality content has been the main focus of organizations in recent years.
Diversification of voices in the production of content.
Focus on and investment in understanding audiences is still a nascent practice among initiatives but it has already generated many lessons learned.

Better listening to their audiences has enabled organizations to:

Expand their audiences;
Identify formats and language that are more appropriate to engaging their audiences;
Identify the most effective distribution channels for their content;
Better understand their institutional identity and unique contribution to the ecosystem.

"Throughout this period, our investment in resources and creative effort was almost 100 percent focused on creating quality content."

Challenges

The participants perceive challenges hindering progress toward their goals and recognize that these challenges affect the ecosystem as a whole.

Difficulties expanding capacity to evaluate and measure social impact;
Lack of systematic investment in continuous research;
Need to invest in and improve the strategic distribution of content;
Ensuring long term financial sustainability.

"The distribution challenge is immense. Effective channels lead to more impactful narratives. Either we invest significantly to ensure we have a structure that enables us to reach beyond our bubble or we won't be able to talk to [anyone but] Ourselves."

Organizations want to know whether their messages have reached their audiences, changed perceptions, and effectively impacted society.

There is much willingness within the field to explore strategies for social impact assessment that are specific to narrative work, and to better understand what impact assessment represents to the ecosystem.

Listen to our podcast about this research:

"Así contamos nuestras historias":

Shared Vision

A major objective of the field is to build shared, long-term, proactive, connected, and fruitful narratives.

Although partnerships and collaborations are already happening, the field has learned that collaboration takes time and requires careful methodologies. This finding underscores the challenges of building shared and long-term narratives. To do so demands that organizations and funders embrace another way of operating that is very different from the current approach.

Recommendations

For practitioners:

Strengthen institutional planning capacity, to shorten organizations' learning curve when it comes to developing creative and informative products.
Listen to audiences systematically.
Collaboratively investigate impact assessment strategies that are specific to narrative work, exploring participatory approaches.
Invest in research systematically, and make it a continuous process, supporting agility in decision-making
Combine investment in production with investment in distribution strategies and explore solutions that bypass limitations imposed by big tech companies.
Define precise, shared objectives to enhance or change narratives and improve collective coordination around these objectives.

For funders:

Continue financially supporting indigenous, Quilombola, Amazonian, and peripheral area creators and offering them spaces for exchange and learning
Raise awareness among other funders within and beyond your networks about the relevance of narratives.
Provide long-term funding to allow the field to mature.
Embrace collaboration methodologies, field research, and co-creation spaces as pathways for broadening grantees' sense of belonging to the narrative ecosystem and building a shared repertoire about the field.
Invest in infrastructure for research, technology, content distribution, and impact assessment.