Harnessing the wholeness of our efforts
Kwem is a community manager at the Global Narrative Hive. Here she shares her reflections on Confluence, a bringing together of the narratives field that was co-convened by the Hive, PUENTES and IRIS in October 2023.
For a couple of windy days, I was joyfully nestled in community with other incredible humans in between the Andes mountains and nourished by the most delicious fruits, in Bogotá, Colombia.
We were at Confluence — a gathering of people in the narrative change field who share some things in common with each other, and that is; we are challenging, shifting, and building narrative power to realise a new world that is possible where:
- everyone’s body is honoured in its integrity and agency
- everyone belongs
- freedom of movement is recognised as central to our humanity
- people live in connectedness with, and as the planet
- people have freedom to advocate for themselves and others
Much of the conversations that I found myself in were curious about what we need to practice for the new world to be possible, and how do we remain in practice, especially when that world seems to be ending right in front of us?
I am compelled by our motivation at the Global Narrative Hive which is to harness the whole of our efforts. As a network actively contributing to the body of work of bridging disconnects in the narrative change field in order to enable actors to build power, including by brokering new relationships, facilitating shared learning and exchange, and advocating for resourcing towards experimentation, here are some reflections on how we can harness the wholeness of our efforts while engaged in narrative change work:
1. Honouring our bodies with care and thus bringing our whole selves to the work.
Doing narrative change work means that we are constantly facing (and learning to embrace) the challenges of living and existing in oppressive systems. When we get into the practice of honouring our boundaries, taking care of ourselves and each other, we are contributing to the resilience and sustainability of ourselves — which extends to other aspects of our lives including our work.
When we start by centering our bodies in our work, practices of holistic safety and security, embodiment practices, convening spaces mindfully, disability and language justice, are not separate from the core of our work.
As we often can meet others at the point we meet ourselves, knowing our limitations and learning to adapt allows us to tap into the abundance of what is possible in our relationships.
2. Getting into right relationship with power and each other.
In order to cultivate deep and meaningful relationships with each other, we need to start by understanding the power we hold, the power we need to wield, the people we need to build power with, and the power we need to challenge. When we recognise power as a tool of transformation, we get curious about making our space and practises more diverse, accessible and generative.
Much of narrative change work is underpinned by understanding power — because narratives are the ‘invisible forms of power’ that come from stories told over and over again that become how the world works, who is accepted and who is not.
Making power visible supports us towards using it as a transformative tool — where we move beyond challenging power and start to ground on the power we have when we come together.
3. Making space for continuous pause, learning, exchange and reflection.
Failure came up as a tool that can alchemize our growth as well as normalise our human experience. Living in a capitalist system means that we can find ourselves in that trap of producing more and more; of praising success and barely paying attention to our failures, how we felt when we failed and what that failure now means moving forward. Failure is a necessary part of learning- and so reframing our relationship with it as the inevitable sets us up for regeneration.
In our pause and reflection, we can learn from each other while cultivating our connection through sharing our experience; and then we might just start feeling less alone. This is how solidarity surfaces.
4. Rewiring our relationship with time and urgency.
Being human, as long as I can recall, has included living right in the middle of multiple genocides and crises. This means that we are constantly challenged by the pressures of our limited energy and time. Time has become a scarce resource that leaves us out of breath, constantly.
Bayo Akomolafe, someone I consider a teacher in this realm, reminds us that, ‘times are urgent, let’s slow down.’ To rewire our relationship with time means to conceptualise time in its depth and not only focusing on its length. To build meaningful relationships requires ‘deep time.’ This can look like a series of conversations over a long period of time — scattered between ‘Out of Office’ to ‘let’s chat again in the new year’ and then finally meeting in person — and then starting all over again until there is alignment.
Getting there together means that some days it’s going to be exciting and, other days, just mundane. I think this is what adrienne maree brown meant by ‘moving at the speed of trust.’
If the gathering at Confluence reminded me something, it’s that, if we can continue to hold onto each other, reminding ourselves of our shared vision of the world, and making spaces to convene and commune with each other from time to time, then, step by step we are building power with each other towards a more just world that we are all in desire of.
As the Global Narrative Hive, we are committed to helping facilitate the important ongoing connections that began in Colombia — from convening ‘failure cafes’ to playing an active role in conversations on liberation and care. We have loved working so closely with our co-convenors IRIS and PUENTES and warmly anticipate future collaboration.
Were you at Confluence? What did you learn about how we can harness the wholeness of our efforts?
We’d love to hear from you and together form an archive of reflections here. Please add to the comment section below.
Kwem is a feminist thinker and space holder and one of the community managers of the Global Narrative Hive. She has extensive experience in communications and community building in movements advancing social, economic and political justice. Kwem joined the Hive because she believes in the power of collective dreaming with diverse people around the world.
