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Choose Your Own Adventure: A Strategic Framework for Narrative Building
Photo Credit: Christian Streili
A new white paper developed through Salzburg Global’s session, “Creating Futures: The Art of Narrative,” held in April 2025, offers a timely and practical contribution to the field of narrative change.
“Choose Your Own Adventure: A Strategic Framework for Narrative Building” (CYOA) introduces an adaptable, empathy-centered approach for creating narrative interventions that respond to today’s social, cultural, and political complexities. Created collaboratively by a working group of artists, cultural leaders, strategists, and practitioners, the framework grew out of a prototype first explored during the Salzburg Global session. Since then, the team has expanded it into a comprehensive tool designed for individual practitioners, cultural institutions, and funders.
At its core, CYOA recognizes that narrative work is nonlinear. The framework guides users through key components including purpose, audience, format, resources, research, distribution, and evaluation. It does this in a circular, choose-your-own-path model that reflects how real narrative practice unfolds. This flexibility allows users to begin wherever their clearest entry point lies, while still building toward a coherent strategy.
What distinguishes the framework is its grounding in empathy. In a landscape marked by polarization and exclusionary narratives, the authors highlight empathy not as sentiment, but as a strategic necessity. The heart of this lies in humanizing issues, strengthening trust, and inviting deeper engagement across lines of difference. CYOA provides a practical, accessible roadmap for shaping narratives that support pluralism, deepen understanding, and strengthen the cultural conditions for long-term social change.
Choose Your Own Adventure: A Strategic Framework for Narrative Building
This white paper was developed by Salzburg Global Fellows Elijah McKinnon, Fariba Mosleh, Juliana Martinez, Luvenia Kalia, Marya Bangee, and Monica Roa. They attended the Culture, Arts and Society session on "Creating Futures: Art of Narrative" in April 2025.
