This is key - that question of would I want my story told in this way?
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Really agree on the power imbalance and all your comment Kalkidan - I think its vital too to have a full ecosystem that supports ethical content ‘gathering’ or ‘recording.’ It’s good to have a bespoke role or ringfenced part of a role for someone responsible for content, on top of a data protection officer, who can add a layer of ethical storytelling/moral best practice to a technical or legal process. It is all interlinked. (Content systems too playing an important part of respect for data)
I also really love SJ’s response on mindset.
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@sarahjanesaltmarsh - I love that! it is always important to self reflect, would I want my photo, my voice, my story shared in this way
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I also love the way the Skoll Foundation brings a sense of glamour to social change - check out the production value of this and how they highlight the theme of the forum, juxtaposed with Maya Angelou poem.
The social change eco-system is a bubble - one we can believe is far and wide but it must spread further and I find this a powerful way to engage
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Simple, but often overlooked – paramount to ensure your content is available in the languages understood by the audiences you wish to reach. The default is often English but we limit ourselves if communications doesn’t go beyond this one language.
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Yes, i agree to the regular feedback - I shared a point above about agency and I think when we help people challenge the misconception “it’s just me - nothing will ever change” - beautiful things can happen. Ripples of hope and engagement from individuals to communities and more…
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Thank you for sharing this story! Great example of how we should consistently be asking individuals and communities how they feel about the way they are portrayed and taking their answers to heart.
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I think that the rules of fairtrade are highly applicable to the guidelines of fair trade stories. Transparency and feedback loops!
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I love harnessing the power of play and believe this is a huge opportunity for the social impact eco-system. We often say to partners who work with play verto “serious work doesn’t have to be serious”. Our world is so full of fear - that sometimes fearful messaging can be so alienating…
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Agree with this, Kalkidan. Something we also have done at Rebel Spirit is making sure that the storytellers are not outside, consultant teams but people from the community. It required a huge shift in our processes and work but it totally transforms the biases behind the lens.
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Thank you for raising this point–it really is often overlooked. It’s a place where emerging technology can help make our storytelling more inclusive.
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Yes, technology and with the whole AI shift currently, taking caution about the same human biases and stereotypes that these technologies could portray
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Hello everyone, Im Alice and i work at Business Fights Poverty. Im really enjoying the range of resources and organisations being mentioned here and wanted to share a favourite of mine: Farmers Voice Radio. Increasingly companies with supply chains are benefitting from this methodology to reach smallholders in tea, cocoa, coffee. It genuinely puts power into the farmers hands and other farming listeners much prefer hearing from people they know or are in similar positions as themselves. Check it out here: https://www.farmersvoiceradio.org/
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Our third question of this discussion today:
There is a great group who deal with the ethics and grey areas of storytelling in social impact context but predominantly in the UK – called Story Network/Mile 91? I have only been to one and its invite only but very good and worth investigating if you think you could do with a problem solving by crowdsourcing industry ways of doing ethical storytelling. A group of NGOs join on a monthly basis. I think forums like this are important, where we can collaborate, not compete to share best practice on processes for getting truly informed consent, or for feedback processes when language is a barrier and so on.
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These guys @bridget? https://www.mile91.co.uk
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Create sharing and learning platforms or events (such as today’s discussion) to learn from different organization’s experiences. Make that a regular process so that we can learn from each other but also challenge each other.
Identify ways to share data and insights and even make it public when possible.
Revisit and reflect on how we use data and insights and what small and big shifts we should make in our messaging.
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This is going to sound like a typical academic who thinks there are some, well, deeper issues that make things even more complex. (That’s because it is coming from a typical academic who thinks there are some deeper issues that make things even more complex!!) Sorry.
Anthropologists and neuroscientists have shown that human beings are most “at home” in relatively small groups. Without going into great details, the sizes of the groups range from 4-6, 30, 150 and 500. At each next level, the degree of connection with others in the group lessen and, with that, the lessening of human-centredness. I believe that we have to keep these neurological breaking points in mind if we are to have constructive dialogues about social impact that remain human-centred. That’s not to say that wider communications are not important – they are – but I do think there needs to be a mix of authentic, personal connection with others to draw upon the empathic mindset gets people to care about others different from them.
But that also shifts the question of how do humans live as humans in sizes of societies that really don’t match their neurobiological capabilities? That has impact on collaborative communications, on business and peace, on just about everything.
As with my other posts, that is not to detract from the kinds of work you are all doing which I think is awesome, but for me, how to keep things human on a scale that doesn’t match humanness is a 30+ year quest that I know is Sisyphean, but a quest nevertheless that I have sold out (in a good way) my career in trying to figure out at least moving that rock further up the hill.
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My current purpose in life is how we better reach and amplify the voice of lived experience - which becomes power research and impact data. At Play Verto we do that harnessing the power of play and are demonstrating the power of partners vs panels when it comes to conducting research:
Here’s a little intro to what we do:
We building a data commons where all anonymous data collected using play verto is available to impact leaders to build upon. No more data behind paywalls - allowing all of us to act as the custodians of the voices of the players and shape strategies, programs, collaborations, stories and my favourite - collective impact strategies.
if anyone knows the pain of survey fatigue or a lack of real world data - come and play with us…
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I think so much of this work hinges on our ability to get into building processes that are dynamic, responsive and inclusive. Lots of big words there that really mean nothing so let me get more clear on what I think the ToRs are with that.
Processes should allow for myriad, diverse and interesting products. But a structured process helps more stakeholders to get there. This is different than a checklist, because it is action based.
Dynamic - these are things that are changed by the user and changed as an iterative process. Forums that keep track of those changes, that create community dialogue around HOW a process was used - not just the quality of product - are really important.
Responsive - give it time before reacting and changing it. See how it works for a while.
Inclusive - co-created with storytellers that have not been at the table. This also means that we need much better definitions of diversity that extend past representation alone and far past macro levels of identity.
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