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. 

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.

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.

Setting

This includes all of the background information that helps readers understand the situation, such as your organisational goals, research question(s) and objective(s), conceptual framework (e.g. strategic perspectives and value lenses), and methodology. These pieces of information constitute the introduction of your final report.

Characters

Your narrative protagonists are your stakeholders – the narrative is for them, not the data! These include those for whom you have planned to create a change, as well as other stakeholders like funders, partners and local authorities etc. You can have a short ‘who is this report for’ section or a summary of your impact beneficiaries in the introduction. There are also supporting characters such as the survey/interview participants who share their experiences from a personal perspective. Their perspectives are the evidence you need to support your impact claims in the main body of the report.

Plot

This is how your narrative flows from one finding to the next. A good plot in the main body of the report links your findings, impact claims and supporting evidence in a compelling way to guide readers through your impact journey and finally answer your research question(s).

Plot twists: surprise, contrast or conflict

Surprises are the interesting discoveries, problems or puzzles derived from the data. Like conflicts in a novel, these are important elements to hook your readers and keep them engaged before presenting your findings in detail.

Reflection

This is the end of your narrative, which forms the conclusion. Remember your audience and what they stand to gain from reading your report. Now, you look back at the entire impact journey, summarise it and identify implications of positive findings as well as resolutions for problems.

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!

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:

• Did the impact assessment reveal that your assumptions were confirmed?

• Were there any unexpected results?

• Did the assessment reveal your activities caused a change in areas you did not expect?

• Did you expect to create change in some areas but didn’t find any evidence that this happened?

• Did you find any negative results? 

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?

Review the value lenses for inspiration

Each lens enables us to zoom in on the perceived value of what you measured, now from a specific perspective, without being distracted by the bigger picture.

Think about the strategic perspectives

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.

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. 

Less positive findings are important in your impact story for many reasons. Providing only the ‘good bits’ of an impact story may make it sound less believable. It’s neither good practice nor ethical to pick and choose your data according to what makes your narrative sound good. Finally, it’s important to share your data so it’s there for you and others to learn from. Can you present the ‘bad’ data but also share what you have learned and how you will improve in future? This is already a very strong message that you are sending to your audience. 

Get inspired - review the work of the Europeana Task Force dedicated to story-telling on Medium.

Practical exercise - create your narrative arc

We’ve developed a worksheet to help you draft a narrative. Get creative!

Explore how we used this technique to report on the impact assessment of Europeana 2020.

Next step

• Worksheet - create your narrative arc

• Visualise and present your impact narrative