Narrative, Complexity and Change
I’ve just finished Tim Harford‘s excellent Messy (paperback just out) alongside Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa‘s The Leopard and both have thrown up examples of phrases that brought a smile to my face and, along with an example from a conference earlier this year, highlight one of my concerns about automatic forms of text analysis. To be […]
Tomorrow, I (Tony) am running a workshop on narrative in Leeds at the LGComms conference – looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and returning to a theme that I haven’t touched on in a few years. And in preparing today, I came across this blogpost from five years ago – which while relevant to […]
Moving cultural beliefs and patterns is tough – the way that people behave generates micro-narratives and stories that then inform (constrain) how other people behave. Feedback loops and patterns that can strengthen over time, making change seem impossible*. In our work with SenseMaker, we see this in organisational cultures, in national values and beliefs and […]
Last week, Tony gave a talk at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Navigating Complex Adaptive Systems. Brilliantly hosted by the UNDP Innovation team, particularly Malika, the video from the hour-long presentation is here The presentation looked at the core elements of complexity, how to approach dealing with complex systems and included questions on […]
A recent conversation with client-turned-friend Kecia Bertermann*, Monitoring and Learning Director at GirlEffect, prompted some thoughts around global social networks – something Kecia’s been working on generating for young girls in varying countries. While the focus is naturally towards creating friendship groups – strong local links in individuals’ networks – as a core part of […]
It’s a couple of months ago now, but Narrate’s Chief Storyteller, Tony Quinlan, was invited to talk at the fourth UN Data Innovation Learning Lab event, held in Nairobi, Kenya in March 2017. The event focused on “making data meaningful and making the invisible visible“. The video of the talk is available on YouTube here: […]