At The Colorado Health Foundation, we know that Coloradans, and their stories, are at the heart of our goal to improve health and well-being in Colorado. Stories have a unique power: to evoke emotions that can help shift hearts and minds in support of health equity (we’ve written about this before, see here and here).
Stories are also the building blocks of deeper narratives that shape cultural attitudes and behaviors. Every narrative is simply a system of stories, told and understood subconsciously or consciously. By telling new stories, we shape new narratives.
Grappling with the stories that dominate at this moment in time—and with the feeling that we are losing ground—can be deeply frustrating, scary, and uncertain. When basic rights and well-being are at stake, it may feel impossible to understand why some are still hesitant to support the issues we’re working to advance.
As we face these challenges, there has never been a more important time than now to authentically and ethically tell stories that uplift our shared humanity, shared values, and shared emotions as people. To support Colorado advocates and community leaders in doing so, The Colorado Health Foundation is hosting a two-part virtual series led by our longtime messaging research and strategy partners on the evidence-based Heartwired approach for persuasive storytelling and messaging.
The Heartwired approach helps us understand our audiences as humans, and what’s going on in their brains and bodies when they think about social issues, including the ways in which their emotions, lived experiences, values, identities, and beliefs combine and collide to shape their responses. Heartwired messaging works because it is psychologically aligned with how we, as humans, sort through information and conflicting perspectives to arrive at a conclusion.
The Heartwired approach has successfully created winning storytelling strategies that change hearts and minds—and real-world support—on issues such as freedom to marry for same-sex couples, immigration, affordable and supportive housing, medical aid-in-dying, abortion care, and COVID vaccine uptake.
For instance, many Coloradans say they feel that society is more polarized than ever before, making it hard for them to believe that any solutions can work. This creates a barrier for them to feel motivated to care or take action. The Heartwired team has developed and pressure-tested messaging strategies to help overcome this barrier by nurturing compassion, strengthening support for issues, and motivating audiences to take action.
Come join us, and other advocates and community leaders in Colorado, for a highly interactive Heartwired workshop series focused on hands-on application, discussion, Q&A, and community-building among participants. Along the way, we might just discover that we share more with our audiences than we think, and that change is more possible than we imagined.
REGISTER NOW for this two-part workshop series!
- Part 1: Thu, Apr 16 – 1-3 p.m.
- Part 2: Thu, Apr 23 – 1-3 p.m.