The Heroes' Narrative is a leading communications tool uniting the progressive community in Washington state around a shared narrative, led by values-based messages and heroic stories.

History

The Heroes' Narrative is managed by the Communications Hub, a program housed at Fuse Washington that provides capacity building, technical assistance, and strategic support to communicators and campaigns throughout the state.

Assessing a need for a strengthened progressive voice in Washington state after the disastrous 2010 elections, we developed the first narrative tool, the Hero's Handbook v1, with the input of both local and national leaders and communications experts from all major issue areas. The narrative was implemented in the field and we quickly saw tremendous results in rates of civic engagement and participation. By shifting the messaging strategy from facts and policy conversations to values-based stories, partners were able to grab hold of the public's attention and energize both hearts and minds. The second and current narrative resource is shared on this website and launched in 2014.

The key to the success of the Heroes' Narrative has been its continual development and ownership by leaders and thinkers from a diverse range of issue areas and communities across Washington state. The Heroes' Narrative is our shared story, a story we created together to provide a united progressive voice in our democracy.

Join us and tell our heroic story to reclaim the future.

Team

Dujie Tahat, Communications Hub Director
Alison Cheung, Communications Hub Manager
Gavin MacPherson, Visual Design Specialist
Reiny Cohen, Communications Hub Senior Strategist

Photography

We share our gratitude for the contributions of photography for this website and materials under special permission, public domain, or Creative Commons (CC) licenses, as noted, from the following sources: NASA (Public Domain), OneAmerica (Special Permission), The Library of Congress (Public Domain), Ken Collwell (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0), David Tan (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), Pete Souza (Public Domain), Brett Curtis (CC BY 2.0), Brittany Randolph (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), US Coast Guard (Public Domain), Stephen Schwartz (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), Brook Ward (CC BY-NC 2.0), Nate Gowdy Photography (Special Permission), Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo (Public Domain).

A Note on Creative Commons Licensed Works in this Guide:
Photographers whose work and subjects whose likenesses appear in this guide should not be understood to have reviewed, approved, or endorsed its contents. All photographs have been edited by the publishers. Creative Commons license language available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses