Need help with workplace vaccination mandates?

Kia ora  from Jess,

Most days now a request pops into my in-box from a concerned principal, employer or board of trustee member about how to talk with their staff about vaccinations. These emails always come from a place of care and concern for everyone involved. 

People have asked, "I have a staff member who I am so concerned about losing her job, how can I talk her through this?" and "I'm on a school board, how can we make sure that teachers and staff have the best information to answer all their concerns?" 

How we can help you

At The Workshop we have developed various tools to help you and your place of work. Especially relevant now are:

1. Our guide to encouraging vaccination in the workplace

2. Our guide to talking with whānau and friends (and colleagues) about vaccinations. 

3. We have also made the flow chart available as a stand alone image and quick reference guide to share (see below).

It is hard mahi. To continue to hold care for all the different people you have responsibility for: those who need others to be vaccinated, those who are not vaccinated. 

This pandemic is challenging us all in so many unexpected ways. We hope that we can offer some support in this important work.

And remember to be kind to yourself.

Flowchart: Three vaccination conversation pathways: tautoko, kōrerorero and awhi


For more guidance on narratives around topics such as transport, climate change,  justice reform,  and more, visit our website - we have freely available message guides.

If this email was forwarded to you, you can get future emails like this by signing up here. 

Get in touch with operations@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice or do training for your team.

The team at The Workshop - Marianne, Jess, Sharon, Gidion, Jordan, Carolyn, Ellen and Nicky

How to talk about co-governance of our bioheritage

Kia ora  from Jordan,

When it comes to our natural environment I’m pretty confident that we all want the same thing – to ensure the wellbeing and protection of our taiao for future generations. Threats like myrtle rust pose a serious risk to the ngahere ecosystem of my own hapū and iwi whenua, so this kaupapa – supporting community-led environmental solutions through narrative change – is one I am so honoured to be involved in.

To awhi our friends at the BioHeritage Science Challenge and the kaitiaki doing this deeply important work, we are really pleased to announce the release of our new messaging guide, How to talk about co-governance of our bioheritage.

This guide has been designed to help our environmental and Treaty advocates and communicators use effective narratives and communication strategies to build support for mana whenua-led environmental management, and shared-decision making between tangata whenua and tangata tiriti in protecting our taonga species and ecosystems.

Some of the key thinking this guide can be used to help bring to the surface:

• We can create legislation, policies and practices that support co-governance partnerships and actively create a healthy taiao/environment together.

• When mana whenua-led kaitiakitanga is honoured, and environmental management centres on local expertise and knowledge, the benefits are collective and shared by all of us.

• Through agreements that honour this work and create legal pathways to tino rangatiratanga, we can bring together distinct knowledge systems and approaches that complement each other. 

• Through partnership and reciprocal balanced relationships we can realise the joint hopes and ambitions that our ancestors had for their future generations in signing Te Tiriti.
  

  How we can use narrative strategies to surface this thinking:
   

• Lead with a concrete, shared vision of a flourishing taiao, balanced decision making and tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti thriving as a result. Be clear about the pathways to achieving this vision – co-governance might be one of these. 

• Don’t focus on the hard to persuade people who are in opposition to this work, look instead for and talk to people who care but need effective communications to draw them in. 

• Draw on self-direction and equity values to help audiences understand the importance of co-governance and tangata whenua-led environmental management. 

• Use a leadership frame to communicate the strengths that iwi, hapū and local communities bring to this work and how Māori leadership of shared spaces will benefit us all. 

• Use solidarity frames to remind tangata Tiriti of their obligations as Te Tiriti partners and how they should offer their support.

If you’d like to learn more about the project, the BioHeritage adaptive governance team are holding a webinar on the 15th of November, follow the link to register: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7965708174554449163

Mauri ora from Jordan and The Workshop team

For more guidance on narratives around topics such as transport, climate change,  justice reform,  and more, visit our website - we have freely available message guides.

If this email was forwarded to you, you can get future emails like this by signing up here. 

Get in touch with operations@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice or do training for your team.

Communications that build trust in the Covid-19 vaccine

Kia ora  from Jess and Jordan,

I (Jess) got my second COVID vaccination this week, another two weeks and I will be very relieved to be able to say I have immunity to the worst of COVID-19. It felt a very empowering thing to do in the face of a lot of concerns I have about Delta. Emma, the nurse who talked me through it, was brilliant. I have anaphylaxis to some medications, and she really took time and care to make sure I was well looked after. 

As a really powerful (but not the only!) tool to help us keep COVID-19 out, lots of us are talking about vaccination. From the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, to Elmo from Sesame Street reiterating the importance of getting vaccinated, 2020 and 2021 have seen a wide variety of communication campaigns and strategies about COVID-19. Showing there are fantastic stories to tell when we have a great narrative strategy in place.

Our recent publication How to talk about COVID-19 vaccinations: Building trust in vaccination, provides evidence-based communications techniques and tools for those people and organisations telling stories about the importance of getting vaccinated. The purpose of this guide is to help understand the foundations that underpin vaccine hesitancy and build our narrative strategies in response. Describing eight techniques and tools that effectively address vaccine hesitancy, while showing techniques already in use. We also provide tools and templates to help you use these findings. Including posters to print out explaining how immunity works to protect us all.

This month's newsletter showcases communications that build trust in the Covid-19 vaccine in a positive, creative way. We highlight some of our favourite effective communication campaigns that encourage vaccination in the ways the research suggests works.

P.S. Keep a lookout in your in-box because in the next week or so we will be releasing the latest in our COVID-19 communications suite of tools: How to talk to whānau and friends about vaccination. The conversation guide is designed specifically to help with those tricky one on one conversations we are all having.

Examples from the Narrative Movement

Giving Covid Its Final Curtain Call

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra encourages Australians to give us the performance of a lifetime and get vaccinated against Covid-19.
 

• The extravagant two minute video leads with a vision of a brighter future, “Let's give Covid its final curtain call and go back to what we love most”.

• They emphasise the importance of unity and collective action, “We need you to come together and get vaccinated as soon as you’re eligible, to give us the performance of a lifetime”.

• The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra leads with collective benefits that the vaccination offers us, using values of responsibility and care getting back to the things we love. Collective responsibility is emphasised, “This isn't just about you as an individual soloist … It’s an ensemble effort”.
  
  
  

They do a great job at framing decision making in the context of collective benefit over individual choice. The video is visually engaging while encouraging vaccination through intrinsic values and collective action. Great mahi from The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, you can see the full video using this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDfug35d5fU

Elmo Encourages Vaccination 

“That's why I got the Covid-19 vaccine, so me and my family and neighbors can get back to play-dates, trips, cookouts and sports”, says Father Louie, Elmo’s father. Sesame Street has led vaccine communication with intrinsic values of care and love; and to get back to the people we love.
Through our research on how to effectively communicate the Covid-19 vaccine, we have found that surfacing and engaging people’s intrinsic and collective values helps them to understand complex collective social problems and solutions. Sesame Street does a wonderful job of encouraging vaccination through values of care and love for one another.

https://twitter.com/sesamestreet/status/1430590900175056900
 

The Value in Hearing directly from Rangatahi Māori

Hāpai Te Hauora communicates the Covid-19 vaccination by sharing Rangatahi Māori voices and values of care, responsibility and empowerment.
In our guide How to talk about COVID-19 vaccinations: Building trust in vaccination, we emphasise the importance of amplifying experts who can speak to people’s personal experiences and concerns, including Māori, Pacific and disabled experts; or people most trusted by these communities.

Hāpai Te Hauora gives a personal voice to the Covid-19 vaccination, while communicating good information from someone trusted within the community. This communication campaign is effective at providing vital vaccination information to Rangatahi Māori while using intrinsic values that lead with a vision for a better future.

https://www.facebook.com/hapaitehauora/photos/a.203529373020349/4608648622508380/?type=3&theater

The Workshop in the Media

Emphasising Creative and Effective Vaccine Approaches 

Vaccination provides the best protection to everyone when we have collective immunity. High levels of immunity in a population shield everyone from the worst of Covid-19. To achieve this, individual level benefits to get the vaccine should not be emphasised. Instead, framing the vaccine as a part of a collective effort to protect the community is important in encouraging more of our population to get vaccinated.

Co-Director Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw discusses this in her recent article with Newsroom titled Jess Berentson-Shaw: On ‘incentives’ and the vaccine hesitant. Jess mentions that when we use rewards and punishments to get hesitant people vaccinated, we send the message that the benefits of the vaccine are so weak, that people need an external motivator. This frames vaccination only in the context of individual-level gain and loss. Jess instead, highlights three main ways to encourage vaccination: 

• Through making vaccination easy and accessible to all communities, removing financial, social and physical barriers that stop people from accessing the vaccine.

• Providing ‘social proof’, if people we trust get vaccinated, we are more likely to do the same.

• Making vaccination the default, using an ‘opt-out’ not ‘opt-in’ approach. This works under the presumption that everyone has the positive intent to get vaccinated, limiting talk about choice and encouraging healthy vaccination behaviour.

You can read Jess’s full article here: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/jess-berentson-shaw-do-vaccine-incentives-help-hesitant-people

Notes from the Narrative Movement 

Passing The Message Stick 

We have been deeply inspired by the work done by many people, including some of our friends and collaborators in Australia, to produce advice on messages that are effective in building public support for First Nations self-determination and justice. This report, and the beautiful website that accompanies it, is the result of a two-year research project led by Dr Jackie Huggins AM, Larissa Baldwin and Karrina Nolan, supported by GetUp, Original Power and Australian Progress. Research on this project was undertaken by our colleagues at Common Cause Australia. Check out their website and report.

https://passingthemessagestick.org/

Latest from The Workshop 

Encouraging COVID-19 Vaccinations: A Guide for Workplaces, 2021

Mapping the Landscape: How to Talk About Systems Change in Aotearoa, New Zealand, 2021

Talking about COVID-19 vaccination with whānau Māori, 2021

All Covid-19 publications from The Workshop

For more guidance on narratives around topics such as transport, climate change,  justice reform,  and more, visit our website - we have freely available message guides.

If this email was forwarded to you, you can get future emails like this by signing up here. 

Get in touch with Rachel@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice or do training for your team

Marianne, Jess, Sharon, Carolyn, Jordan, Rachel, Ellen and Nicky at The Workshop

It's here: a flowchart to navigate tricky vaccination conversations

Kia ora from Jess and Jordan

Between us we have had some tricky personal conversations about vaccination lately with people we care about. As we have experienced, hard conversations need preparation, and some scripts even. There are a lot of thoughts and ideas out there about how to talk to friends and whānau (too many perhaps!). As the two of us have been deep in this vaccination research for some time, we thought we could help with some practical tips. 

So we have put together a new guide to support your conversations with friends and whānau about COVID-19 vaccination.

In the new guide you will find:

• key principles

• a handy flow chart with three pathways to follow depending on where people sit on the vaccination continuum 

  • pathway 1. tautoko (already vaccinated) 

  • pathway 2. kōrerorero (not there yet)

  • pathway 3. awhi (the firmly opposed).

• some tips and scripts to try when tricky questions come up

• we also have some ideas on how to manage conversations about meeting up with people who are not vaccinated.

All of it is based on research.

We all want for our whānau and friends to be well. Connecting and hearing their concerns is a fundamental part of supporting the people we love over the vaccination line, particularly as these conversations become increasingly difficult to navigate. We hope this guide helps

Jess and Jordan and all the team at The Workshop

More of our resources on COVID-19 vaccination communication

P.S. We will be having a live Q&A session on the contents of the guide soon, we will send an email with the details.

How To Lead Your Communications With Values

Kia ora from Marianne,

Unless you’re an essential worker (in which case, thank you!) you’re probably trying to work from home right now. Which is difficult in different ways for each of us. But we’re doing it. We’re staying home. Parenting and caring for others. Juggling all the things. Worrying we aren’t doing any of them well enough. Missing the people and places we love. 

Why are we all doing this hard thing? 

One of the strongest motivators for all of us to stay home right now is knowing that this is the best thing we can do to keep everyone in our communities safe and well. 

We are doing this because, despite our differences, most of us care a lot about each other. 

In our Narratives for Change workshop,  we show a graph of the values prioritised by people in a representative sample of New Zealanders. It shows that the vast majority of people in the sample prioritise our shared wellbeing more than personal success, and caring for each other and the planet over accumulating wealth or social power.

This helps to explain why clear messaging that frames staying at home as an act of care for others, has been so effective. But it also begs the question: if we all care so much about collective wellbeing, why is it so hard to get support for some of the changes that will make the biggest difference to people and the planet?

Part of the answer to this question is that we all hold many different values, and the context in which we are making a decision significantly influences which of these many values we prioritise in that decision. People will make a decision using the value that has been brought to the surface for them. 

For example, if I have been repeatedly told that the reason I should care about climate change is the economic cost of inaction, then when I make decisions about my support for big climate actions or policies, I’m likely to consider them in terms of money. Research has shown that thinking about the economic cost or benefits of a decision is more likely to motivate me to do things for my individual personal benefit, and less likely to motivate me to support  things for collective benefit.

What this means for people trying to deepen public understanding of complex issues and build support for the big changes that will make the world a better place is that we should always offer people intrinsic, collective reasons to care and act.

This month’s newsletter has a selection of articles and reports from our own research and others’, which will give you concrete examples of how you can use intrinsic, collective values to motivate people and build support for those big changes that we need to make for our shared wellbeing.

Take care, 

Marianne

Crafted at The Workshop

Talking About Early Brain Development in Aotearoa New ZealanD

The Workshop has developed a report on how to talk about early brain development in Aotearoa New Zealand to build greater awareness of brain development and how to support it in the early years. This was commissioned by the Child Wellbeing Unit of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and followed a two day brain development collective wānanga held in March 2021. The wānanga brought together non-government service providers and designers, government and philanthropic funders.

The purpose of this report is to provide a partial map of the current territory of public narratives and mindsets around early brain development, explain guiding principles for deepening understanding of the issue through more effective narratives, and propose some communications strategies. We have also recommended some potential next steps in this narrative shift work.

You can read the full report here:

https://www.theworkshop.org.nz/publications/talking-about-early-brain-development-in-aotearoa-new-zealand

Reframing systems change: Changes that make the biggest difference

Throughout our research project ‘How to Talk about Systems Change’ we heard about how everyday life could be much better, for so many more people, once the changes we are working toward have happened and our human-built systems have been redesigned to prioritise people and te taiao. We were reminded of how critical this work is, yet how challenging it can be to communicate.

To get there, the knowledge holders we spoke with identified the need to build a shared understanding of what systems change means among our community of practice. In our upcoming report, we follow the framing advice of UK researchers in reframing systems change as the changes that make the biggest difference - and offer the upstream/downstream metaphor of an awa or river as a way of explaining the changes we are working towards, and why they are important.

Explaining the upstream/downstream metaphor

Downstream, where most people stand, are all of the visible problems we collectively wish to overcome. As we walk upstream we can see the social, environmental and cultural conditions that shape our lives and experiences. For example, the way in which people in our public institutions treat us, our information environment, how our transport systems and cities are built, the policies the government puts in place (or doesn't), the rules of the economy, and our cultural beliefs and values. Extensive bodies of research show us that, in changing some of these upstream conditions, we can make the biggest improvements to the most people’s lives over the longest timeframe, for the least individual effort. In making the changes that make the biggest difference, we are helping to shift the status quo of downstream responses to create change through upstream solutions.

We’re looking forward to sharing the full report in the coming months, and in the meantime, hope this helps to explain the important work you and your teams are doing to make these upstream changes happen.

Mobility As a Matter of Justice; The Benefits of a Car-Free Future 

Playgrounds, plants, trees and benches are a few of the ways Oslo, the capital city of Norway, changed their infrastructure to prioritise the public. Car-parks have been removed and replaced with public spaces. Streets have been rezoned into pedestrian ways and cycle paths, and public transport in the city center has been boosted. 

Jess Berentson-Shaw talks to Neil King in his podcast ‘On The Green Fence’ and discusses the positive impact reducing cars in New Zealand can have on the environment and our communities. Currently our infrastructure makes it difficult and unsafe for disabled, elderly and young people to navigate our big cities. Listening to those most excluded from our transport system and understanding how we can build transport systems that deliver for them, will lead to the most cutting edge, innovative solutions to our transportation challenges. 

Prioritising pedestrians and cyclists within our urban centres, shifting away from car-centric cities, will bring huge benefits to our health and climate. The government needs to focus on centering active and public transport as an alternative to cars. 

We expand further on how to bring intrinsic values to the discussion around transport in our guide How to Talk About Urban Mobility and Transport Shift: A Short Guide, 2020. We discuss how our perceptions about what people value are often incorrect. This is due to dominant cultural narratives and discourses that surface values relating to wealth and success. Instead, research shows that what matters most to people, is taking care of each other and the planet. 

Extrinsic values focus people’s thinking on short term financial win or loss and aligns with the dominant narrative; in this example, that more roads are needed to fix our transport issues. Instead, lead with values of independence and autonomy; a safe environment for our children to walk and bike independently on our streets. 

Listen to Jess Berentson-Shaw discuss further in the link below. https://open.spotify.com/episode/1PnPN6enceIQhFNURgF2PP 

Image: Retrieved from Independent UK (Car free streets in Oslo, Norway)

Notes from the Narrative Movement

Making Our Streets Safer: How Deaf and Hard of Hearing Communities Access Urban Areas

We are currently working on how we can communicate changes to open our streets to people who use bikes, walk and who use public transport. Making our streets open to people of all abilities is a critical part of these changes. Our streets are closed for too many people due to the prioritisation of private cars. Here is a really interesting piece by Camilla Payne on how we can make sure streets and urban are open to people who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/DHH).

https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2021/06/10/deafscape/?fbclid=IwAR0TyZCB0GqGOFIBcpneo14oEgfnyus-v6A5S4GT7FG1x2Z97-1Kb0b_KXg

Narratives at Work

Why You Should Lead With Values of Independence and Autonomy 

We want a world where all children have the freedom to travel easily and safely, with the ability to visit their friends or attend free time activities without their parents.  

When discussing transport, leading with values that bring helpful thinking to the surface is vital in building public support for systems change. These include: Freedom, autonomy and independence, inclusion, connection to community and responsible management of the environment. We need to shift away from narratives based on money and economics. Dominant narratives typically focus on short term financial win or loss. Advocates and researchers know how harmful this can be. Instead, lead with values of independence and autonomy. For example, we can give our kids independence to get around their streets and enjoy the freedom of being kids. 

The Urban Cycling Institution has done a great job at leading with intrinsic values over economic reasoning. They lead with the value and vision of autonomy, providing valuable information that proves it is possible to create a city which is designed to support our children’s autonomy.

Source: City of Copenhagen (2021) Via Urban Cycling Institute 

For more guidance on narratives around topics such as transport, climate change,  justice reform,  and more, visit our website - we have freely available message guides.

If this email was forwarded to you, you can get future emails like this by signing up here. 

Get in touch with rachel@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice or do training for your team.

Marianne, Jess, Sharon, Lucia and Rachel, at The Workshop

Covid-19 Vaccination Guide Resources

To accompany the release of our guide “How to Talk about COVID-19 Vaccinations”, these resources have been created for you to use and share. Simply click on the images below to download. This work is in collaboration with The Workshop, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig and Daylight Creative. See our publications here

Talking about Covid Vaccination

Kia ora from Jess,

I feel incredibly grateful for the space we enjoy here in Aotearoa from experiencing the worst effects of COVID-19 our communities. I’m grateful also to all those people working across the system to keep COVID out before we have full vaccination.

Vaccination has become the critical next step to moving past the pandemic, and many people are right in the thick of vaccination work and keen to do it well. There is a great sense of responsibility driving this work. We feel that sense of responsibility too. In collaboration with our Australian sister organisation, Common Cause, we have been researching how to talk about vaccination to people who have hesitations. We are also putting together a guide for communicating COVID-19 vaccination to build trust. Trust is a fundamental aspect of people’s ability to hear good information about vaccination and decide to vaccinate.

While you're waiting for the guide, we have included some of the key findings and recommendations in this newsletter, as well as some examples of fantastic vaccination communications already being used.

Crafted at The Workshop this Month

How to talk to people not quite ready to get vaccinated and build their trust

Giving people access to good information about vaccination in ways that work for them is an important determinant of their health and wellbeing. So how can we talk about COVID-19 vaccinations in ways that deepen understanding and encourage those who may not be quite ready to get vaccinated? 

Some things we have learned about vaccination are:

• False information may be one factor in hesitancy but it is only one of many, including personal and social group influences, contextual influences, and vaccination specific issues (like access). 

• Vaccination decisions are about trust far more than they are about information.

• Social norms have a powerful effect on vaccination decisions (seeing people move from hesitancy to vaccination encourages us to vaccinate).

• Most people are willing to get vaccinated. Being hesitant does not prevent people deciding to vaccinate. Many people have not adopted a binary position.  

• We should treat hesitant people as though they are willing to get vaccinated under the right conditions, because many are. 

Communications can help create these conditions. Here are five ideas on how...

• Aim to connect and build trust rather than correcting, mythbusting or extensive fact led communications (facts don't build trust in people, being trustworthy does).

• Collaborate and co-develop vaccination communication programmes with communities: sharing knowledge and handing over the work. This will increase trust and ensure that the people visible on vaccination communications can speak authentically to the experiences of those communities particularly.

• Concerns about access may be the primary concern for people. In such cases assume willingness to vaccinate and clearly communicate: how people can get a vaccine, that it will be easy, and that someone they trust will deliver it.

• Use intrinsic values: motivate people to vaccinate through values of care, responsibility to others, and empowerment over their wellbeing, (ditch individual motivations, fear and safety ones). Vaccination is a collective action, if everyone who can get vaccinated gets vaccinated and our community becomes immune we will all be able to enjoy the benefits of keeping Covid-19 out.

• Frame vaccination in helpful ways. These include:

  • Talk about the better world we get through immunity (don't focus on the act of vaccination, it’s not motivating)

  • Talk about vaccination as the next step following all the other things we have done to keep COVID-19 out (as opposed to framing vaccination as a silver bullet)

  • Avoid talking about hesitancy as THE problem to overcome, instead frame the transformation from hesitancy to getting vaccinated.

  • Avoid urgency frames, instead talk about vaccinating now in the space we have.

  • Use gain frames, not loss frames - leading with the benefits of vaccinating is better than negative consequences of not vaccinating.

  • Avoid the word choice (it can surface ‘free rider’ thinking - that is thinking someone else will choose the vaccine so I don't need to in order to get the benefit). Do talk about empowering good decision making.

Applying some of these key insights to interpersonal conversation, Jess wrote an op-ed in Stuff last month.

 https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300312557/covid19-how-to-talk-to-people-not-quite-ready-to-get-vaccinated

Talking about Covid Vaccination

For an Inspired evidence based COVID-19 vaccination communication campaign go no further than the CCDHB Māori and Pacific Team.

Some great things about this campaign (which are supported by the evidence):

Image: The CCBHD Trusted Faces Trusted Places campaign for more information see https://positivelypacific.org.nz 

1. This campaign understands that trust is fundamental in vaccination decisions and people need to know someone THEY trust will give them a vaccine in a way that works for them (especially where trust has been eroded previously by negative treatment).

2. This campaign frames transformation: instead of talking about hesitancy as a problem, they have a story about someone moving from hesitancy towards vaccination.

3. This campaign motivates people with collective intrinsic values around community responsibility

Amazing work!

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/442908/covid-19-vaccine-pacific-community-turns[…]=IwAR2AVXZkamJDaoBbrowI7lvf1fmp0cehPncLuscKeJekAgkYMejqmAISLos

Supporting Mana Whenua Led Environmental Management

Now is an important time to tautoko our bioheritage champions with narrative strategies we think will build greater understanding and support for Te Tiriti partnerships and a flourishing taiao. As hurtful narratives surrounding He Puapua circulate the media and the halls of parliament, we have been working with the Bioheritage National Science Challenge team on a messaging gude about co-governance partnerships. Keep an eye out for the guide, due to be released next month.

Notes from the Narrative Movement

Daniel Kahneman – Why We Contradict Ourselves and Confound Each Other

We really enjoyed Krista Tippett’s recent interview with Daniel Kahneman which discusses his childhood in Nazi Germany, the origins of his interest in social psychology and the ‘irrationality’ of humans. At the Workshop we draw on Kahneman’s research and writing in our narratives for change work and Kahneman’s 2011 book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ is a key text we reference in our Narratives for Change foundations training.

https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?i=1000520494598

Words Matter: Talking about Mothers, Work and the Pandemic

This blog on framing mothers and work is a reminder of how important it is to be aware of the unhelpful frame and narrative that is used to explain many issues of inequity: personal choice. In this case the frame is that women's personal choices have caused them to leave the workforce in the wake of COVID-19. With all issues of inequity, where we are working on changing the things that will make the biggest difference, we should avoid a choice frame and instead employ an external forces frames, to help people see the people and the processes that constrict and constrain people's options and lead to inequities in society.

https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/guest-post-when-we-talk-about-mothers-and-work-during-the-pandemic-words-matter-2576a2ea967b

The Role of Narrative Change in Collective Action

In this dynamic discussion, described as a “master class on narrative” from the 2021 Collective Impact Action Summit, Melody Barnes (Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions) leads a conversation on the importance and power of narrative in collective social change efforts. 

https://www.collectiveimpactforum.org/resources/role-narrative-change-collective-action 

You can get more guidance on narratives on topics from transport, climate change and  justice reform in our freely available message guides on our website.

If this email was forwarded to you, you can get future emails like this by signing up here. 

Get in touch with Rachel@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice or do training for your team

Marianne, Jess, Sharon, Lucia and Rachel, at The Workshop

Mindset shift and we're hiring at The Workshop

Kia ora from Jess,

Many of us are working on changing the things that will make the biggest difference on significant social and environmental challenges. These include legislation and policy changes, physical changes to our cities or rural environments, changes to decision making processes, and devolving power and funding decisions to communities. Alongside these explicit and significant upstream changes, we need to shift people's mindsets to help support such change. Mindset shifts help build public understanding of these big issues, help people see where the changes that make the biggest difference can be made, and provide policy makers and politicians with social proof that the public supports these changes. Mindset shifts will lift people’s thinking, including policy makers, out of the space of individual behaviour change, which is insufficient for the types of challenges we face, into the systems change space. Mindset shifts will also help support the changes to stay in place once made.

News from The Workshop

We are currently recruiting!

We are growing again and are looking for an operational expert to join our team. Head of Operations is a new role in our Senior Leadership Team with a focus on reviewing and enhancing our existing business frameworks, policies and procedures. This role will ensure our team has the right tools and resources to do excellent work that makes a positive impact, while enjoying their work. The role is currently posted on The Kin Recruitment page. Applications will close on 7 June.

Crafted at The Workshop this Month

Stubbing out Climate Change

In this analysis in Newsroom, Jess discusses the history of SmokeFree work in Aotearoa New Zealand. She outlines how both visible (policy, practice, structures, funding) and invisible (narrative tools for mindset shifts) change was used to get tobacco companies and the harm they cause out of communities, and build our health. She makes the case that this is a model of change we can also apply to climate change, poverty, housing and more. 

The key take-away is that mindset shift is a critical tool in our toolkit for making the changes that will make the most difference to people and our planet. Because for those people who are being harmed the most by our current systems and structures it is vital we ask the least of them in the way of change, and instead do those things that will improve their lives in the easiest and biggest ways.

Notes from the Narrative Movement

Mindset Shifts - What are they? How do they happen?

Recent growth in demand for and interest in The Workshop’s research is part of a larger trend, described in this report as a ‘swell of interest in mindset shifts and narrative change’. This work discusses methods for addressing the challenges of ‘widely shared patterns of public thinking that obstruct progressive change’. 

‘Yet these discussions are frequently unclear and imprecise. People use terms and concepts in different and often unspecified ways. While the participants in these discussions bring substantial expertise and experience to bear, knowledge about mindsets and narrative is divided across disciplines and dispersed among practitioners, scholars, activists, policy experts, communications experts, creatives, and organizers.’

This report synthesises a year of research to bring together insights into ‘mindset shifts’ from across a range of fields and experts. The report contains lessons and recommendations for how ‘advocates, activists, funders, and other practitioners can maximize the impact of their efforts to change how we think about social issues in order to change the contexts and structures that shape our experiences and realities’.

Mindset Shifts - What are they? How do they happen?

Narratives at Work

Aotearoa will Thrive if our Rangatahi do

How do we use effective communications tools to shift the mindset of our audience so that they can focus on upstream solutions? In her recent op-ed Aotearoa will Thrive if our Rangatahi do, Lani Evans draws on research from The Workshop to talk about poverty and well-being in Aotearoa in a way that helps her readers think more deeply about the complex structures that influence poverty and wellbeing. Lani shares her vision: “New Zealand should be a place where all young people have access to the resources and opportunities they need to thrive, where rangatahi can make decisions and shape their own futures”, talks about the systems that create poverty, and guides us to who the agents are that can influence change. You can read more about our research on Poverty and Wellbeing in our guides:

Talking about Poverty and Welfare Reform in Aotearoa: A Short Guide

How to Talk About Child and Family Wellbeing: A Short Guide

Talking about Covid Vaccination

At the Workshop we’ve been talking about how we talk about COVID vaccination. In the coming months we’ll be producing work on what effective communication should look like in the media, government and interested parties. How do we ensure a happy, healthy, safe, vaccinated population? HSE Ireland show us how focusing on what we want to achieve is key in this YouTube video, Every Vaccine is a Little Victory.

From our Board

Economist and The Workshop board member Julie Fry talks to Bernard Hickey about her recent work for the Productivity Commission on migration. Together with migrant workers’ activist Anu Kaloti, Julie talks about the need for reform, both to improve our economic performance and to treat our guests fairly and humanely.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/23-04-2021/bernard-hickey-on-our-kind-countrys-mean-migration-settings/

You can get more guidance on narratives on topics from transport, climate change and  justice reform in our freely available message guides on our website.

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Get in touch with rachel@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice or do training for your team.

Marianne, Jess, Sharon, Lucia, Jordan, Mark, Carolyn  and Rachel, at The Workshop