A Field Initiative Built on Trust
How a start-up collaborative fund leveraged their narrative system to demonstrate trust and build BIPOC narrative power
By Erin Williams and Cinthia Carvajal
8/23/2024
*2022 Nebula Convening Graphic. Photo courtesy of Constellations.
In 2020, The Center for Cultural Power convened a group of 80+ strategists from around the country for a visionary conversation. Together they envisioned how to strengthen the nascent field of BIPOC narrative and cultural strategy at the intersection of art, culture, and social justice. The goal - to accelerate a shift in worldview from domination to collaboration, care, and interdependence. Their collective vision was documented in the report Celestial Navigation: How to Fund Culture Change in the U.S. From there, The Constellations Culture Change Fund & Initiative, housed at The Center for Cultural Power, was born and the design team, advisory board, and staff were trusted to take the work forward.
One of our first priorities was to design trust-based and participatory funding models to radically redistribute resources to support Artist Disruptors and traditional and tradition-based Culture Bearers - who are rooted in community and culture, advance deep narratives, and help us envision and live into a just and sustainable future. Our mechanisms created opportunities for our network partners to apply the wisdom of their craft and knowledge of their communities to guide the flow of resources into their ecosystems through nominations, endorsements and decision-making panels. Since 2020, we raised $13M and redistributed over $7.2M to build BIPOC-led narrative and cultural power in regions across the country where resource extraction and under-funding persist including the Southern Border Region, the South, the Midwest, the Non-continental United States, Indigenous Communities (Sovereign, Tribal, and Indigenous Nations and Territories) and California’s Health Index Communities.
To grow our network and amplify the impact of our regional work, our design team developed the Constellations Narrative System. This is a collection of values and deep narratives from the field that drive and support alignment across our partners. The narratives uplift mutual care, interdependence, abundance, self-determination, and dignity. For example, “We thrive when we care for each other.” Our hypothesis is that the narrative system supports an experiential mindset when it comes to collaborative funding and moves the trust-based philanthropy needle. Essentially, by focusing on world-building narratives, our network partners are able to design and iterate with nuanced strategies that work best in their communities. To coalesce and fund artistic and cultural practices aligned around a set of shared narratives, acting like a North Star, challenges traditional philanthropic thematic focuses and serves as a gateway to trust-based resourcing.
In addition, the decision to adopt a narrative system was based on the idea that by aligning narratives, we can amplify regional impact. For example, if we fund organizations and individuals in different communities that are telling stories that all reflect a set of underlying narratives, we assume that those narratives will have more reach and influence. Narratives are a way to connect communities working on different issues that may be siloed. In effect, narratives become the connective tissue that shifts worldview, culture and policy leading to more effective social change.
We are continuously learning about this experiential narrative alignment approach by asking our network partners the following questions:
How has this enabled you to do values-based, intersectional storytelling that connects multiple issues in your communities?
What narratives have you been working to advance in your work, and how?
To what extent has your approach shifted or evolved during your partnership with Constellations?
And so far we have heard the following insights:
“The narratives vocalize exactly what I've been doing and are already part of my work; and having them in actual outlined values and priorities was really beneficial. They are a good way of checking what we're doing. For instance, are we still serving the purposes of this narrative?” - Mariah Gladstone, Constellations Chapter 1 Fellow, Culture Bearer, Blackfeet, Cherokee
"There is something very powerful about saying, ‘these are the ideas and the principles of which we want you to have as a foundation’ so that we can talk amongst each other.’” - Leonard Bruce, Constellations Chapter 1 Fellow, Artist Disruptor, Gila River Indian Community
"The narratives are written in English words, but as Culture Bearers and Artist Disruptors, we have the flexibility, the expansiveness, and the permission to expand on them and to interpret them in the way that works for us and for our communities.” - Jason Pereira, Constellations Chapter 1 Fellow, Artist Disruptor & Culture Bearer, Orange County, California
Our Constellations Chapter 1 impact report is due out in October 2024. As a team, we are eager to share how our narrative system has supported the work of our 150+ network partners and how it could be strengthened and/or leveraged into specific regional or cross-thematic narrative strategies.
One of the recommendations made in Celestial Navigation was that social justice issue funders should directly support artists and culture workers advancing authentic narratives as part of their portfolio. To dig in more, we are hosting our second funder learning circle in early 2025. All funders are welcome, so if you’d like to join us, let us know. Together, we hope to galvanize catalytic investments and resourcing models to build BIPOC narrative and cultural power across the critical issues that matter deeply to our communities.
To connect with Constellations, contact them at constellations@culturalpower.org and sign up to follow their journey here.
Art piece: “This comic imagines what is possible with trust-based philanthropy.”
Artist Credits: Nansi Guevara
Website: nansiguevara.com
Instagram: @nansiguevara
Instagram: @nuestradeltamagica
Erin Williams is the Lead and Chief Field Building Officer at Constellations.
Cinthia Carvajal is a Grantmaking Strategist at Constellations