In the Hands of the People: A Workshop for Communicators

As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, we gathered communicators, advocates, organizers, and creative partners to explore how we can tell a more honest, inclusive, and resonant American story.

We’re especially grateful to our featured speakers for this event — Meg Bostrom (Topos Partnership), Margy Waller (Think Big / Topos), Kevin Banatte (The South), and Emily Chatterjee (Future Currents) — for guiding such a thoughtful discussion.

To help you continue building on that momentum, we’ve pulled together a set of resources and video recordings from the session. Whether you’d like to revisit key insights or share them with colleagues, everything you need is included below.

If questions come up or you’d like to stay connected, feel free to reach out anytime at team@thinkbigalliance.org

Elaine Mejia: Who gets to tell the story?
Meg Bostrom provides a short overview of a research-backed narrative strategy for this moment.
Meg Bostrom, Kevin Banatte, and Margy Waller discuss ways to bring the narrative strategy to life.

Featured resources:

  • Our new social media toolkit offers ready-to-use posts, visuals, and messaging guidance to help communicators tell a more honest, inclusive, people-powered American story as the country approaches its 250th anniversary.
  • Join us on Instagram! In the Hands of the People is an account created and maintained by Think Big to highlight both the expressions and the spirit of the core idea – In America, the people are supposed to be in charge. Help us spread the word by liking, commenting on, and sharing. You can even download and remix our reels using the Instagram options.
  • Explore our living Gallery of Creativity, which illustrates the narrative frame through inspiring stories in history, photography, poetry, visual art, and more.
  • Dig into our FREE US@250 Narrative Guide, created with Topos Partnership, for ways you can use the full narrative framework and the research behind it. Or start with our short summary document for the key takeaways.

Additional initiatives and ways to plug into the 250th: