Kia ora from Julie,
Have you ever been in a situation where you desperately wish you knew how to shift the conversation about something you care deeply about to be more helpful and constructive? I certainly have and it doesn’t feel great. Many people we work alongside raise how frustrating they find this experience of feeling stuck or tongue tied.
These opportunities to shift the conversation happen all the time, in work meetings or presentations, in a media interview or responding to a social media comment, and even in our personal lives at a BBQ or school or community event. At The Workshop we call the action of intentionally shifting the conversation ‘reframing’.
We know it takes thought and practice to feel more comfortable and confident to reframe in the moment. That’s why we’ve been working to develop simple tools and training workshops to support you to reframe the conversation – starting with preventing poverty.
Our new Reframing Poverty cards are a simple and practical tool to help you tune in to the common unhelpful ways of talking about poverty and then prompt you with the effective reframe to use that will help people see the issue differently.
“Thanks to the ongoing support of the Peter Mckenzie Project we have been able to develop and evolve our advice on framing poverty prevention, and I am very grateful to PMP for giving The Workshop the time and space to research this kaupapa. Over the years we have been lucky to collaborate with many people who are doing the daily mahi on poverty advocacy, who have generously contributed their knowledge to the development of this work. We now offer these reframing cards as a tool which we hope will benefit these champions, and everyone working to change the stories we tell about poverty and the solutions that are available in Aotearoa.”
This tool is designed to help deepen people's understanding of the systemic causes of poverty and open their minds to the solutions that work. You can use these cards to prepare for the times when you know you’ll face unhelpful framing about poverty and the people who experience it. They can help you practice matching the evidence-based reframes for different situations and grow your confidence in responding in the moment. Having a reframe ready up your sleeve makes all the difference when heading into that next meeting, presentation or interview.
The more comfortable and confident we feel to reframe the conversation, the more impact we can have through shifting the narrative on the big issues that really matter to us all.
Download the cards here.