Voices from the Future: Storytelling Our Way to Collaborative Governance
By the SiX Communications Team
From May 6-10, SiX’s communications team had the privilege of attending the 2025 Narrative Power Summit hosted by Reframe and RadComms. Our session, Voices from the Future: Storytelling Our Way to Collaborative Governance, invited participants to reimagine the future of state governance and use storytelling as the vehicle to get us there.
In a moment when reactive strategies aren’t enough, we challenged attendees to dream big. What if by 2035, your state was a national model for collaborative governance? What relationships would have made it possible? What narratives would we have let go of—and which ones would we have built together?
Participants broke into small groups to explore these questions and created “oral histories” from a future where power is shared, legislators co-govern with communities, and policy reflects lived experience. These imagined futures weren’t abstract: they were deeply strategic, grounded in real shifts in trust, relationship-building, and collective power.
We wrapped it all up by asking everyone to write down three tangible actions they’d take when they returned home on postcards they’d receive in the mail in a few weeks as reminders for their future selves.
The session reflected the very core of SiX’s mission: helping legislators and communities govern together in new, transformative ways. As we face authoritarian threats, we need more than resistance; we need irresistible, actionable visions. We’re so grateful to everyone who joined us in building one.
