HIGHLIGHTS

  • ideas42 partnered with local Memphis organizations and community members to create “The Stories We Tell”—an event designed to transform harmful narratives about poverty and race.
  • The event leveraged several design elements that draw from behavioral science research, including live, first-person storytelling, facilitated conversations, and visual cues.
  • Attendees shared positive feedback about the event’s emotional resonance, citing themes of empowerment and resilience, community unity, and personal agency.

The Challenge

Some of the most deeply held narratives are about poverty: why it exists, why it persists, and what should be done about it. Many of these narratives are based on demonstrably false and outdated tropes that make their way into the public imagination and directly influence how we vote, and in turn how policies are designed and implemented. They also influence how we treat others and how we think about ourselves. When policies and programs are based on false narratives, they’re less effective at addressing poverty, and in some cases, can perpetuate or exacerbate it.

 

Our Approach

With support from the Kresge Foundation and the Assisi Foundation of Memphis, ideas42 partnered with five nonprofit and social sector organizations in Memphis, Tennessee, to use insights from behavioral science to shift harmful narratives around poverty.

This group, which we call the Local Narrative Team (LNT), is composed of the Center for Transforming Communities, Latino Memphis, MICAH, SCORE CDC, and Stand for Children. Together, we conducted local surveys, qualitative interviews, and open-ended questionnaires to uncover narratives in Memphis.

Our research revealed that most respondents acknowledge that there are deep structural and systemic causes of poverty, such as inequitable access to resources, legacies of racism, and discriminatory policies.

Simultaneously, however, we also found the following beliefs to be prominent across the city:

1. The idea that there is a deep, ingrained, intergenerational culture of crime and poverty in Black communities in Memphis.

2. The idea that Memphis will inevitably remain a poor and dangerous city, no matter what is done.

3. The idea that the only way out of poverty is through hard work and personal effort.

Because these beliefs point to an understanding of poverty that emphasizes individual fault and futility of action while failing to recognize well-documented structural barriers to economic mobility, we call them harmful narratives.

 

Designing “The Stories We Tell”

After identifying these prevalent harmful narratives, we turned to the question, “What narratives do we want to uplift instead?” We collected input from the LNT on what they believed this counternarrative should articulate about 1) people experiencing poverty, 2) the reasons for which poverty exists, and 3) what can be done to solve it.

Drawing on our research, a series of co-design sessions with the LNT and community members, and evidence from behavioral science, we developed “The Stories We Tell”: a celebratory cultural event that highlighted the myriad experiences of Memphis residents through storytelling performances, murals, and facilitated conversations.

 

Mural for website

Rooted in behavioral science research and leveraging principles like social identity theory and perspective-taking, the initiative aimed to foster unity, empathy, and a sense of shared identity among Memphians.

 

Our Impact

To assess the impact of two events, we used both qualitative and quantitative methods. Our quantitative data were inconclusive due to a small sample size, making it challenging to assert definitively how the event might have changed people’s views on poverty. However, the qualitative feedback painted a richer picture of the event’s impact.

Attendees left the events moved, inspired, and empowered to tell their own stories. They emphasized that the event made them feel less distant from others in their community by highlighting similarities between diverse individuals.

Read more about our impact here.

”

[This event] creates more connections between different people to show we are more alike than different.

 

-Event Participant

”

[This event] got me back to community and away from selfish in-my-own-bubble ways of thinking.

-Event Participant

Takeaway

Building on our initial research and partnerships, we continue to support the narrative change landscape in Memphis. In October 2024, we launched an inaugural cohort of the Memphis Narrative Change Curriculum, a series of workshops that employs narrative as a lens for analysis of issues in Memphis. Through the curriculum, participants gain the tools to advance strategic narratives and dismantle harmful beliefs about poverty at the self, interpersonal, organizational, and ecosystem levels.

Simultaneously, we are enhancing our methods for measuring how narratives show up and shift over time. This includes the use of techniques like natural language processing to analyze how narratives circulate in mainstream media, alongside audience segmentation based on psychological and sociological variables.

Interested in our work? If you’d like to work with us, please reach out to Eva Matos at ematos@ideas42.org.