Welcome to the third edition of Listening to Change, a regular digest from the Centre for Public Impact, Dusseldorp Forum, and Hands Up Mallee sharing what we are hearing from our listening sessions. Over the past few months we’ve spoken to over 30 people using stories in government and philanthropy to better understand the role of storytelling in systems change.
We’ve now completed our final listening sessions and held a sense-making workshop where participants came together to draw out themes and insights from the broad range of perspectives. We also shared the draft report with those who participated in the listening sessions, with an invitation to review, provide comments and approve quotes. We hope you’ve had a chance to do so as we look forward to incorporating feedback before sharing the full report in October. In the meantime, here is just a taste of what we’ve heard.
Big data on its own is great at providing a sense of what has happened at scale but it is very thin. Using stories can enhance the data to give a better understanding of the why.
“Big data has huge prospects for storytelling. Most of my job is using stories to explain data at the aggregate level.”
There is a need for safe spaces for storytellers to share their stories. Spaces where storytellers have agency and where government can listen to the stories as intended.
“Stories cannot be elevated, you’ll break them if you do. Government needs come down to where stories are. ”
We’ve also heard that some areas of government are reluctant to engage with community. Fearful of receiving stories and being unable to act on them.
“There is fear, risk aversion and a lack of good process to support the engagement ”
While we get stuck into preparing the report you can check out the latest blogand some of what we've been watching and reading below.
Policy Design and Practice, by Professor Michael Mintrom and Ruby O’Connor
This explores storytelling in public policy matters when communicating policy decisions, and how policy makers craft narratives to influence policy success?
Do you want to add to the conversation? We'd love to hear your thoughts!
The Centre for Public Impact is a global not-for-profit organisation founded by the Boston Consulting Group. We serve as a learning partner for governments, public servants and the diverse network of changemakers who are leading the charge to reimagine government. We work with them to hold space to collectively make sense of the complex challenges we face and drive meaningful change through learning and experimentation.
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