NarrativeSeeds helps social justice organizations and networks build long-term, healing-centered narrative change. Using a narrative organizing approach, we help take narrative change strategies from idea to implementation through facilitation, coalition building, strategy co-design and/or project management.
Freedom from systems of oppression
We live with and build practices from mutual concern for one another.
We honor the cultures and identities cultivated through lived experiences and we see them as points of solidarity not separation or exclusion.
We allow divine connections to exist and emerge outside of oppressive doctrine.
We study, pursue and practice radical love in our governance, economies, and other structures.
We enjoy life and the experience of living. We practice abundance by consuming what we need and practicing regenerative living so that everyone has what they need to feel good, healthy, and cared for.
We honor land, each other, history, learned lessons, generations, and the gift of experience.
NarrativeSeeds learns from the following frameworks, political traditions, texts and practice spaces…
Principal
Courtney M. McSwain is a writer, narrative organizer and facilitator with over 20 years of experience working for social change and justice. She is the principal of NarrativeSeeds, a consultancy helping social justice organizations and networks build long-term, healing-centered narrative change. Courtney has worked across social change sectors and strategies, combining experience in research methods, policy analysis, strategic communications, narrative change strategy development and coalition building. Prior to NarrativeSeeds, Courtney served as the Director of Communications for the National Youth Justice Network (NYJN), where she evolved the organization’s communications work into a power and movement-building approach. In 2024, she was selected into the Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice Movement Leader Fellows program. Courtney holds a master’s degree in public policy from American University and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from N.C. A&T State University.
Courtney’s narrative practice and experimentation are influenced by the political and facilitative frameworks of abolition, healing justice, Emergent Strategy, and Black feminist thought. She roots herself in the lineage of Black women’s narrative practices, particularly the act of “self-defining” – or dismantling oppressive narratives through the agency of storytelling, as articulated by scholar Patricia Hill Collins. Courtney is forever inspired by, and returns often to work the work of, Nikki Giovanni, bell hooks and June Jordan. Courtney is grateful for every phase of her movement and creative life and looks forward to the ever-deepening journey of showing up for justice and liberation.
