GO DEEP OR NO HOME? The essential power of deep narrative

By Paddy Loughman & Ella Saltmarshe

Climate breakdown, genocide, rising fascism, inequality, ecosystem collapse… The almighty challenges we’re facing at the start of 2025 are symptoms of the systems we live in. These systems are rooted in deep narratives.

If we want a fair, liveable future on the planet, we need to shift the deep narratives we orientate our societies around. If we don’t do this work, the deep narratives of the status quo will thwart our efforts, like a powerful undertow* dragging us away from our destinations of fair, liveable futures.

So what exactly are deep narratives? Why do they matter? How do they relate to the immediate issues that need addressing? What can we learn from the folk who have been trying to shift them? What are the possibilities for future deep narrative projects?

What is a deep narrative?

A deep narrative is a powerful subconscious model that underpins everything we think and do. A deep narrative shapes our world by scaffolding our ontology, mythology and epistemology, shaping implicit assumptions and closing off certain possibilities from even being considered. Deep narratives weave together and are woven by mindsets, values, and worldviews. Some examples of deep narratives are white supremacy, universal human rights, and progress.

This differs from how we tend to think about a ‘story’ or ‘narrative’ — as something expressed literally, consciously; like a media narrative, the narrative of a film, or even a ‘grand’ narrative like the Enlightenment or The American Dream. Surface stories like that are easier to spot, and they are also easier to change, but changing the surface stories is not enough to change systems.

Think of deep narrative as the soil from which everything grows: our understanding of our place in and relationship with the world, our technology, law, science, politics, institutions.

These deep narratives don’t only shape our outer worlds, but also our inner ones, living in our bodies, in our conditioned responses. They are both a product and producer of our neurobiological responses, influencing us both explicitly and implicitly.

This means that deep narrative work is not only about explicit stories, pop culture, media, advertising, entertainment, but also somatics, law, urban design, architecture, institutional culture etc.**

It is about the way that stories shape the world we live in, which affects what we think, feel and do, which in turn reinforces deep narratives. As Rashad Robinson explains, narrative work is not just about ‘dispersion’, but also ‘immersion’.

Some examples

To help illustrate what deep narratives are, let’s dive into two very different ones about our relationship with this planet.

Exhibit 1: ‘Anthrosupremacy’ — the deep narrative that suggests humans are exceptional, superior to the rest of nature, and are entitled to prioritise our needs and demands above all others.

Today this assumption of exceptionalism and entitlement pervades modern society, encouraging the design of economic systems that treat natural ecosystems as ‘externalities’ that can be damaged without consequence, and any human who can be deemed ‘less than human’ — e.g. considered ‘vermin’ — as expendable, exploitable, or irrelevant.

Challenging and seeking to change this deep narrative can seem like an insurmountable task until we recognise that it hasn’t been around for that long, relative to the long arc of human existence…

… which leads us on to Exhibit 2, a deep narrative that has been around for far longer: Interbeing. This deep narrative suggests that we are all connected in relationship as part of a whole; that we are members of a wide web of life whose ongoing thriving is intimately entangled with our own, and which we must carefully steward to survive. This deep narrative has not only been around for longer, it is now being recognised as accurate by modern science.

Is this even possible?

In short, yes!

The examples below work in different ways with the two key dimensions of deep narrative work: (a) Coordinating different efforts with shared goals (b) Basing the coordination in an attempt to change (or maintain) the deep narrative ‘soil’.

1. We Make the Future implements a empirically-tested, shared, place-based, ‘race forward’ narrative. 100+ partners are involved, 247 orgs have been trained, and 11 states in the US share the aligned narrative strategy. They’ve also gathered $714k in ‘microgrants’ across 44 organisations to fund content creation.
2. Civil Marriage Collaborative (CMC) supported the marriage equality movement’s aligned plan, pooling over $150m from coordinated 14 orgs, eventually leading to the law changing in the US.
3. A Narrative Strategy for Belonging addresses racialised inequality in California & counters it with an inclusive vision. It combines a shared diagnosis of sources of inequality and injustice with a multi-pronged strategy for shifting narratives.
4. Beloved Economies Collaborative is a new narrative infrastructure project in the US will connect wider audiences with inclusive economy solutions. They are currently seeking to raise $5.6m for a three-year program of work.
5. Culture Hack Labs have developed an integrated set of narrative tools and techniques to reframing dominant narratives of e.g. land and carbon-centrism, to support a transition to regenerative futures rooted in social and ecological justice.

For another flavour of live examples of this work at scale, look no further than reactionary forces in the world, who are doing this work with coordination, resource and and long-term planning.

It’s worth noting they have a unique home advantage, as they are maintaining systems and cultures that reward them with the resources to do so.

For example:

1. The Daily Wire invested $100m in children’s programming to resist Disney’s pro-LGBTQ+ rights stance, on top of the same amount already dedicated to adult content.
2. PragerU received $268.7m in donations between 2018 and 2023, typically from wealthy individuals, to produce ‘educational’ content covering a range of positions including economic theories that prioritise wealth accumulation.
3. The Atlas Network and previously Mont Pelerin Society have deployed a nearly 80-year long series of efforts to maintain and enhance aristocratic, anti-democratic, free-market fundamentalism. Their network includes The Heritage Foundation, who have pioneered Trump’s latest policy platform, Project 2025.
4. The multi-decade ‘family values’ narrative has used abortion as a wedge issue, in connected campaigns that adroitly harness deep narrative, twinned with strategies for institutional capture and policy change.

This is long-term, deep narrative work. As one narrative expert we spoke to said, “The right… aren’t working 5 to 10 years, but 5 to 10 generations. They are funded, organised, and audaciously empowered.”

This sounds like a nice-to-have: right now we’ve got our hands full firefighting on the immediate issues.

This isn’t a case of either/or.

Potent issue-based messages can incorporate deep narratives, and a shared deep narrative can underpin powerful strategic comms and cultural creation, bringing coherence and even greater effectiveness to a fragmented progressive comms landscape.

The messages can be different, to suit different communities and issues, but the underlying deep narrative will be the same.

Narrative coherence between individual issue-based efforts in the immediate term, is just one dimension of deep narrative work’s benefit. Another is to feed and underpin the more durable, resilient, long-term transformational change that our situation demands.

The viable, liveable, fair futures we aspire to can only thrive in ‘healthy soil’. Recognising this is to also recognise that everyone is involved in the effort to make our soil healthy, whether they are aware of it or not. The things that are planted in the soil also fertilise it. Campaigns and messages and stories — along with technologies, buildings, laws, policies — all contribute to the soil, either reinforcing or altering it.

So there is no question of doing ‘either’ surface work ‘or’ deep work — short ‘or’ long-term — we are always doing both, in an inextricably entangled way.

The question is whether we do so with awareness and intention, and that is what this deep narrative work is ultimately seeking to enable — an awareness of the soil, what it will take to make it healthy, and how we can all play our part in that work.

OK, so maybe this could be useful… what next?

We’re about to focus in more detail on the practicalities of developing this work in the UK. If you’re interested in the detail of doing/supporting this work, read on! If not, feel free to get off the train here and have a cup of tea…

A few months ago, we gathered a group of UK narrative practitioners, movement leaders and funders to spend a day exploring deep narrative work. We wanted to understand the demand for this work here in the UK; to pool collective intelligence on how to do it well; and to imagine next steps. The result was a clear appetite for deeper, more coordinated, long-term work, and a robust list of precedents to build from.

Since then we’ve developed a range of possible ways to develop a UK-wide deep narrative project, which have been evolved in conversation with movement leaders, experts and funders.

All of the options followed the same basic framework….

1. Deep narrative analysis — identifying which deep narrative(s) to work with, based on research, root cause and power analyses, and a nuanced understanding of the cultural ecosystem.
2. Once the key narratives have been identified, organising and coordinating strategy for their spread across a broad ecology of change, including movements, culture and ground-level.
3. Activating strategy in the world via diverse interventions, both addressing explicit and implicit narratives.

Using this framework, we then developed five options to use as thinking tools with practitioners and funders.

1. Focus on research stage, and collaboratively co-design and fundraise for activation phase. The focus here is researching and co-developing deep narrative analysis, the first phase of the work. There would be no advisory or activation.
2. Research + advisory work. Here the initial analysis would be accompanied by advisory work, supporting existing actors to use the insight. There would not be any direct funding for activation.
3. End-to-end, full spectrum project. Includes deep narrative analysis, organising and the design and delivery of multiple interventions crossing culture, policy, strat comms and place.
4. End-to-end, narrative activation achieved by tender and diverse ‘experiments’. Similar to the previous model, but the activation happens through a range of different groups.
5. Funder Collaborative. This option reflects the recognition that this work will require multiple funders and multi-year funding. The initial process would focus on the formation of the funder collaborative.

Interestingly the options that focused either on the research, or research + advisory were not popular amongst those consulted.

“We don’t need more research — we know what to do and how to do it. What we need is better coordination and the long-term funding to support it.”

Precedent has shown that narrative research without activation funding has limited impact.

Option 1: Research-only

Option 2: Research and advisory

The models that got the most love were full spectrum ones that included funds for activation, like the one below.

Option 4: End-to-end, experiments

Although this broad model was popular, there are various tensions and caveats around how it would need to be approached. In particular, working inclusively, ‘power with’ (or ‘care with’) rather than ‘power over’, is vital to this work.

There are also necessary simplifications here, for the sake of the model, which in practice are more complex — e.g. between the different types of organising, which in reality are overlapping and intermingled.

“How can the design reflect the world we’re trying to manifest, through the work itself? Be careful of mirroring colonial, hierarchical structures…be mindful to not create a sense of alienation or particular power dynamics amongst us and those we would be working with.”

Go deep or no home

The spread of ultranationalist, authoritarian, turbo-capitalist, misogynistic, xenophobic, climate-denying, racist forces — all around the world—is underpinned by sophisticated mobilisation of deep narratives.

It is a clarion call for progressive movements and the people who resource them to go deep, or face the loss of everything, and yes that includes a liveable future for our species and many others.

We’ve written this article in the hope that others might either get involved, or take these ideas and evolve them. We want to pioneer these possibilities, to both grow the conversation and the practice of deep narrative work.

If this work doesn’t happen — if we continue with ‘toxic soil’ — no matter how effective our issue-based strat comms are in the short-term, the undertow of the deep narratives of the status quo will undermine those ‘wins’, pulling us away from our destination of fair, liveable futures.

Go deep, or no home.

— -

‘The Truth is in the Soil’ — Ioanna Sakellaraki

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We’ve appreciated conversations with Ruth Taylor, Sarah Joynt-Bowe, Dora Meade, Suzanne Dhaliwal, James Logan, Matt Golding, Mandy Van Deven, Iris Andrews, Ed McGovern, Carrina Gaffney, Husna Mortuza, and Simon Burt to test and develop these ideas. With gratitude for their insight and generosity. We are also grateful to Jessie Nicholls for her vision and support in kickstarting this inquiry.

FOOTNOTES

• * Thanks to Suzanne Dhaliwal for this brilliant metaphor, which she shared in an interview with us.
• ** Thanks to Ruth Taylor for her ongoing leadership in drawing attention to this dynamic, in conversation with us and more widely.