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Intended Learning outcomesThis page is designed to help you:
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You’ve interpreted the data. It’s now time to turn your data into a story. At this stage, it’s helpful to get the perspectives of your communications colleague(s), if this support is available. Let them know in advance that you’ll need this support - hopefully you kept them informed as you went through Phase two.
What should be in a narrative?
There are as many different ways to tell a story as there are stories to be told. Here we set out two key aspects to creating your narrative: what should be in it and how you can structure this in an effective way.
“Change is what story is”
Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
Gather your bricks and mortar, the interpretation of words and numbers
Not all of your data will be numbers and in some cases, you might not have any words. Whether you have conducted purely qualitative or quantitative research or taken a mixed approach, you can still build a strong narrative. The bricks and mortar of your impact narrative are likely to come from your interpretation.
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Tip: You can build a strong impact story with numbers (if you have taken a quantitative approach) or without. Don’t worry if your narrative isn’t statistic-heavy. You might have rich qualitative data to support your interpretations. These can be just as powerful. |
Keep your data and interpretations from your data analysis phase close to hand. Read everything again. Does your interpretation fall into a natural narrative? Review it against the checklist below.
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Checklist: the building blocks of your narrative
An impact narrative can be broken down into five elements. You’ll build this content into an impact narrative arc later.
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Your narrative can come in different scales or formats, like a museum has its own story and individual stories for different exhibitions. You may want to create an overarching narrative for the entire report or just a powerful story about findings and impact claims in the main body or conclusions. Find the approach that works best for you!
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Tip: Have you kept note of any insightful phrases or quotes that you can use in your report and that will help you highlight a specific finding or theme? |
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Think about impact
Now you have the main building blocks of your narrative, it might be a good opportunity to reflect with your ‘impact hat’ on. Now that you have your data, ask yourself:
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Tools from Phase one can help you think about what you include in your narrative. Do you reflect on the social, economic, organisational or innovative value of your activity? Do you think about your legacy or activity? Do you think about the change you find in your data in the short-term and long-term and what connections can you make to the impact you want to make in the world?
Review your change pathway
What was the bigger change that you wanted or needed to see?
What was the problem you were trying to solve with your activities?
Where did you put your accountability line and does that still make sense?
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Which strategic perspective and area of impact was most important for your project? Were you most interested in the social aspects of your activities? Or did you look at what you contributed to the economy? Or was it a mix? In most cases, you won’t see ‘impact’ in practice, but you will see indications of change - the short, medium and even longer-term outcomes you identify in your change pathway.
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How do you manage the good with the bad and tell a balanced story?
In some cases, you might have found some data that you don’t like or that don’t make your activities look as good as you want them to be. In some resources, you might find tips to build a narrative or a story that excludes these ‘bad’ bits. We recommend that you see these as a plot twist or a moment in the story.
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Get inspired - review the work of the Europeana Task Force dedicated to story-telling on Medium.
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Practical exercise - create your narrative arc
We’ve developed a worksheet to help you draft a narrative. Get creative!
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Explore how we used this technique to report on the impact assessment of Europeana 2020.
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