PRESS RELEASE | Grant from Wallace Foundation Supports Narrative Justice Research
Chicago, IL — Full Spectrum Features is honored to receive a grant from the Wallace Foundation to support a new research initiative, Navigating Justice and Harm in the Art of Community Storytelling. This two-year, $500,000 grant supports research into the “double-bind of storytelling.” Through this research, project partners Full Spectrum Features, JusticexDesign, and Inkcap Consulting hope to establish narrative practices that balance accountability, healing, and transformation.
“Narrative practices are the choices we make about how stories are invited, held, and carried forward—not just what gets told, but who gets to speak, who listens, and how we respond,” Director of Education & Research Ashley Cheyemi McNeil shares. “With this project, we’re asking how organizations can build practices that honor the complexity of people’s lived experiences while still moving toward accountability, healing, and transformation. It’s about treating stories not as raw material, but as relationships we’re responsible to.”
While the idea of storytelling as a tool for social change is well established, it can also be incredibly painful. The project partners share a key belief: that storytelling has the power to be socially transformative. However, transformation is often accompanied by discomfort. In the process of one group bringing hard truths to the surface, other communities may experience harm. Our central question asks: How can organizations navigate storytelling’s double-bind—its potential to achieve transformative justice while also posing risks of harm?
Given the current political and social climate, this question is more essential than ever, and is important to acknowledge when attempting to do ethical, person-centered work. Without addressing this, organizations may struggle with challenges of intra- and inter-community healing, and may be caught off-guard by negative reactions to their work. We face a tension in those moments: push forward with difficult storytelling at the risk of causing discomfort, or step back to avoid harm?
Full Spectrum proposes that these paths are not oppositional but intertwined, requiring organizations to develop greater stamina to engage with discomfort as a path to deeper justice. With preparation, communities can productively confront discomfort, making narrative transformation more sustainable and impactful. The research in this project seeks to illuminate this pathway and yield creative and critical works that have significant real-world applications.
The research team will implement multiple research activities, including surveys, focus groups, interviews, observations of practice, and interactive workshops with participants to investigate specific attributes of what they call courageous storysharing that pushes against this double-bind. Ultimately, the goal is to develop and put into practice a framework to equip communities to sensitively navigate this double-bind, knowing that pain in stories cannot be avoided if healing is to take place. If successful, the findings will contribute to the scholarly discourse as well as a practical, research-grounded toolkit that will support organizations that engage in transformative storysharing work.
The deliverables will ideally be used in multiple settings: by educators and facilitators seeking tools for structuring difficult conversations; by arts and cultural organizations working with communities to tell their stories responsibly; and by scholars and practitioners designing public-facing research.
“Ultimately, this project is about changing what happens in rooms where difficult stories are shared," Co-Executive Director Jason Matsumoto said. "The tools will help teachers, artists, and community partners design events, screenings, and programs that don’t shy away from painful histories, but hold them more responsibly. If done well, we’ll see more communities using storytelling to build trust and action—not just awareness.”
Full Spectrum expresses our thanks to the Wallace Foundation for their support of this work.
“Narrative practices are the choices we make about how stories are invited, held, and carried forward—not just what gets told, but who gets to speak, who listens, and how we respond,” Director of Education & Research Ashley Cheyemi McNeil shares. “With this project, we’re asking how organizations can build practices that honor the complexity of people’s lived experiences while still moving toward accountability, healing, and transformation. It’s about treating stories not as raw material, but as relationships we’re responsible to.”
While the idea of storytelling as a tool for social change is well established, it can also be incredibly painful. The project partners share a key belief: that storytelling has the power to be socially transformative. However, transformation is often accompanied by discomfort. In the process of one group bringing hard truths to the surface, other communities may experience harm. Our central question asks: How can organizations navigate storytelling’s double-bind—its potential to achieve transformative justice while also posing risks of harm?
Given the current political and social climate, this question is more essential than ever, and is important to acknowledge when attempting to do ethical, person-centered work. Without addressing this, organizations may struggle with challenges of intra- and inter-community healing, and may be caught off-guard by negative reactions to their work. We face a tension in those moments: push forward with difficult storytelling at the risk of causing discomfort, or step back to avoid harm?
Full Spectrum proposes that these paths are not oppositional but intertwined, requiring organizations to develop greater stamina to engage with discomfort as a path to deeper justice. With preparation, communities can productively confront discomfort, making narrative transformation more sustainable and impactful. The research in this project seeks to illuminate this pathway and yield creative and critical works that have significant real-world applications.
The research team will implement multiple research activities, including surveys, focus groups, interviews, observations of practice, and interactive workshops with participants to investigate specific attributes of what they call courageous storysharing that pushes against this double-bind. Ultimately, the goal is to develop and put into practice a framework to equip communities to sensitively navigate this double-bind, knowing that pain in stories cannot be avoided if healing is to take place. If successful, the findings will contribute to the scholarly discourse as well as a practical, research-grounded toolkit that will support organizations that engage in transformative storysharing work.
The deliverables will ideally be used in multiple settings: by educators and facilitators seeking tools for structuring difficult conversations; by arts and cultural organizations working with communities to tell their stories responsibly; and by scholars and practitioners designing public-facing research.
“Ultimately, this project is about changing what happens in rooms where difficult stories are shared," Co-Executive Director Jason Matsumoto said. "The tools will help teachers, artists, and community partners design events, screenings, and programs that don’t shy away from painful histories, but hold them more responsibly. If done well, we’ll see more communities using storytelling to build trust and action—not just awareness.”
Full Spectrum expresses our thanks to the Wallace Foundation for their support of this work.