Storytelling

We produce narratives to challenge mental models and introduce big ideas. Bringing together written, spoken and illustrated words sparks imagination. Commission and create content with us.

Storytelling can involve:

Lived Realities
Using photography, sound recordings, film clips, maps, and writing to compile experiences of marginalization, name patterns, and extricate what is keeping problems in place.

Desired Futures
Using scenario writing, animation, illustration, improv and the arts to visualize future states, and give outcomes like healing, belonging, connection and purpose shape and form.

Levers of Change
Using case studies and diagrams to illuminate what it takes to get to change, and create shared vocabularies and reference points for how to shift attitudes, behaviors, cultures and structures.

We draw on

Cultural traditions

We love learning traditional storytelling practices, and seek out the wisdom of Elders, knowledge keepers, healers and jokesters to teach us how to capture and share stories across geographies, cultures, and time.

Arts & humanities

We are inspired by the many forms an idea can take — from philosophical thought exercises to sculpted objects to historical timelines. To meaningfully and clearly communicate, we work across mediums and disciplines, and experiment with ways to make the abstract, concrete.

Data visualization

We embrace the power of numbers alongside lived experiences, and use charts, graphs and infographics to show patterns, trends, and opportunities.

Solutions journalism

We drill down into what works, for whom, when and try to report on the practices and policies that are already leading to change, and from which we can learn.

Creative non-fiction

We hone into details, and rather than parrot overdone rhetoric, try to write and speak with an honesty befitting of human complexity.

Browse our latest narrative: Healing and connection in Edmonton

Storytelling helps to:

― Cut through rhetoric & bring people together
― Further civil society values like tolerance and empathy
― Surface hidden beliefs, values and logics
― Inspire and provoke deeper conversation
― Offer alternative assumptions and possible futures