The Global Narrative Hive, incubated at FICS since its launch in 2023, is publishing an exciting new strategy and becoming independent from FICS.

Five years ago, FICS convened a group of campaigners, communications workers, organisers and creatives from around the world alongside a small number of founding funders to co-design a new, responsive piece of infrastructure that could help bridge disconnects in the narratives ecosystem and grow the field of actors using narratives approaches to advance their visions of a more just world.

Since its launch in 2023, the Global Narrative Hive has worked to facilitate shared learning between actors with different skills and knowledges and curate spaces for a wide range of actors to build connections and experiment with narrative strategies – including fostering new thinking about how to engage non-NGO actors and Gen Z in developing powerful civil society narratives and convening practitioners from across movements to respond to anti-rights actors and rhetoric.

The Hive’s refreshed strategy, developed through a listening exercise with over 50 partners and practitioners across 30+ countries, focuses on three crucial approaches: bridging and connecting, transformative resourcing, and centring knowledge equity. To mark the launch, the Hive is publishing a blog series reflecting on themes from these conversations – from narrative infrastructure and sovereignty, to indigenous knowledge systems, to what it means to build connection across difference. Read more here.

For FICS, hosting the Hive has enriched our analysis of the field. Narrative power building remains a crucial strategy for defending and expanding civic space for transformative movements. We are honoured to have been able to support the Global Narrative Hive’s early journey and are excited to see this new chapter unfold.