Public Resource
How Do We Know If We Have Transformed Narrative Oceans?
Tracy Van Slyke and Erica Watson-Currie. Pop Culture Collaborative and USC/Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center
Here’s how to answer the persistent question about narrative change evaluation. The Pop Culture Collaborative is focused on measuring the drops, not the narrative ocean. There isn’t a shared approach that accounts for the diversity of narrative change methodologies and strategies. Evaluation efforts aren’t tracking a field’s ability to build and wield narrative power. If philanthropy wants impact evaluation, we need to help field members pay for it. The result of a multi-year investigation into overcoming these barriers to understanding narratives is INCITE — Inspiring Narrative Change Innovation through Tracking and Evaluation — an adaptable framework designed to equip both field members and funders with shared definitions, measurable objectives, learning questions, indicators, and metrics to understand and assess the impact of their individual culture change efforts as well as the field’s progress towards seeding the narrative ocean with pluralist ideas, narratives, and norms.