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Training

Story-based Strategy: Framing and Narrative for Social Change Makers

Small or large, local or national, building power for your issue or campaign starts with the fundamentals of story-telling.

Alums call the training:

Challenging, productive, practical.
The most useful training I've ever been to.
smartMeme has trained over 4,000 activists since 2002 and collaborated and consulted with over 200 social change organizations to apply story-based strategy to critical campaigns.
Our multi-media, interactive curriculum combines storytelling, critical media analysis, and narrative strategy with organizing and movement building. Our workshops offer activists the lens of “narrative power analysis” to surface and analyze the stories they seek to transform in their work. The trainings give activists direct experience using the Battle of the Story tool –a method that can be applied to any issue or campaign story. 


SmartMeme also offers a wide range of skills and analysis trainings ranging for short tutorials to intensive multi-day seminars including: grassroots organizing, media and PR skills, strategic campaigning, non-violent direct action, facilitation and group decision making. We can custom design a training curriculum to meet the needs of your local community or specific campaign. 

Storytelling has always been a powerful tool for organizers and movement builders to name problems, unite constituencies, and mobilize people towards solutions. Story-based strategy links this traditional organizing technique with new strategy, training, and communications methods––like framing and branding-–to give social change advocates the tools to hone their story, challenge prevailing cultural narratives, and ultimately win campaigns on the issues that affect all our lives.