OUR VISION
transformative tv
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old one obsolete.
BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Imagine the world in 2050 when everything has gone wrong…
We’re in perpetual chaos where the faint memory of cultural stability has given way to the horrors of Handmaid’s Tale, The Road, Mad Max, 28 Days Later….
Easy, right? We know how the future feels if we take the wrong turnings at the many branching futures because we have been shown this over, and over, and over. When we’re not being fed dystopias the overwhelming bulk of our television sustains the sense of business as usual: that might is right, money is power and the people with the most are the best.
Now imagine the world in 2050 where we we have taken the right turning at least some of the time…
We have brought the best of our creativity to bear and have found ways to build a flourishing future together. In this reality, we know that the welfare of one is the welfare of all and are striving for a world where everyone wakes up in the morning and looks forward to the day ahead.
Harder, isn’t it?
Because nobody has ever drawn us a road map of how the world might be if we got things right.
What does a flourishing future feel like?
And how we might get there in a way that brings everyone together: no more tribal hatred, just a community of people, doing their best?
We believe that our current crisis is a failure of imagination, that Television is the story-telling genre of our time – and that if we build utterly compelling TV shows containing seeds of a flourishing future that all people can believe in, there is still time to change the trajectory of our world.
Narrative Ark exists to create the stories of that flourishing future – and to build us the road maps that show how we get there.
all around the world people are creating the narratives that we need
But these stories have never yet been woven into a single unifying narrative that brings everyone together.
In fact, the opposite is self-evidently the case: daily, the fractures grow deeper, the hatred more profound. The Right thinks the Left will overwhelm it with ‘woke’ culture. The Left thinks the Right will bring a Glock to the meeting. The older generation feels unjustly blamed for the world’s crises, the younger feels their grandparents have stolen their future. Colonising nations bury the guilt of colonisation, the colonised bear the wounds.
There is no point in our crafting narratives that speak to a particular handful of these constituencies.
We need to reach everyone: not by coalescing around a vapid centre ground, but by giving authentic voice to as many of the disparate tribes as possible, in order that they feel engaged, heard and represented.
When they are invested, we can begin to explore the possibilities of a new future where that investment doesn’t hinge on one side winning an increasingly divisive cultural war.
We must bring together clear voices from the various tribes who can join in good faith and find ways forward that will work for us all.
This is not going to be an easy task. And yet, we have to try.
TV UNLIKE anything else
We are not going to follow the lines laid by any other project and the stories we create will not be of Pollyanna skipping through the bluebells – far from it. We live in a world where a powerful few control the powerless many and however hard we try, we may not bring everyone on board. There will be mistakes. There will be loss and grief and destruction. These are inevitable in fiction as in life.
Our vision holds all of this. We have our first season outline and a full script for a first episode. Moving forward, we will reach beyond our natural affiliations, and draw into our writing team people whose lives and worlds and deep commitment are other than ours. We are heirs to an evolving suite of social technologies designed to facilitate conversations across the deepest cultural divides so that we can bring the widest range of views into the mix.
Evolution, not Revolution
It’s important to say clear and continually that the future we see is one where the current system, broken as it is, evolves into its successor. Revolution is the paradigm shift of the past. We are seeking a paradigm shift into a future that brings the best of us together, but we believe that this shift can be bloodless, and, if not painless, then the pains will be more those of birth, than of death. The point of creating a road map is to show how we can shift from where we are to where we need to be in workable, creative steps.
Let’s talk
We’d love to hear your thoughts about our Vision and our Projects.
Write to us at:
What does a flourishing future feel like?
And how we might get there in a way that brings everyone together: no more tribal hatred, just a community of people, doing their best?
We believe that our current crisis is a failure of imagination, that Television is the story-telling genre of our time – and that if we build utterly compelling TV shows containing seeds of a flourishing future that all people can believe in, there is still time to change the trajectory of our world.
Narrative Ark exists to create the stories of that flourishing future – and to build us the road maps that show how we get there.
all around the world people are creating the narratives that we need
But these stories have never yet been woven into a single unifying narrative that brings everyone together.
In fact, the opposite is self-evidently the case: daily, the fractures grow deeper, the hatred more profound. The Right thinks the Left will overwhelm it with ‘woke’ culture. The Left thinks the Right will bring a Glock to the meeting. The older generation feels unjustly blamed for the world’s crises, the younger feels their grandparents have stolen their future. Colonising nations bury the guilt of colonisation, the colonised bear the wounds.
There is no point in our crafting narratives that speak to a particular handful of these constituencies.
We need to reach everyone: not by coalescing around a vapid centre ground, but by giving authentic voice to as many of the disparate tribes as possible, in order that they feel engaged, heard and represented.
When they are invested, we can begin to explore the possibilities of a new future where that investment doesn’t hinge on one side winning an increasingly divisive cultural war.
We must bring together clear voices from the various tribes who can join in good faith and find ways forward that will work for us all.
This is not going to be an easy task. And yet, we have to try.
TV UNLIKE anything else
We are not going to follow the lines laid by any other project and the stories we create will not be of Pollyanna skipping through the bluebells — far from it. We live in a world where a powerful few control the powerless many and however hard we try, we may not bring everyone on board. There will be mistakes. There will be loss and grief and destruction. These are inevitable in fiction as in life.
Our vision holds all of this. We have our first season outline and a full script for a first episode. Moving forward, we will reach beyond our natural affiliations, and draw into our writing team, people whose lives and worlds and deep commitment are other than ours. We are heirs to an evolving suite of social technologies designed to facilitate conversations across the deepest cultural divides so that we can bring the widest range of views into the mix.
Evolution, not Revolution
It’s important to say clear and continually that the future we see is one where the current system, broken as it is, evolves into its successor. Revolution is the paradigm shift of the past. We are seeking a paradigm shift into a future that brings the best of us together, but we believe that this shift can be bloodless, and, if not painless, then the pains will be more those of birth, than of death. The point of creating a road map is to show how we can shift from where we are to where we need to be in workable, creative steps.