The New Narratives Workshop held in Leeds on March 19–20, 2024, provided a space for organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers to examine their approaches to inclusion, storytelling, and digital engagement. Designed to help participants reconsider projects that facilitate participation, the workshop foregrounded the use of storytelling as a tool to counteract cynicism and fear, encouraged decisions about digital tools, and explored how to engage without defaulting to visibility. Building on the earlier Folkestone edition—which enabled six Kent-based organisations to develop initiatives ranging from mental health to skills training—the Leeds workshop offered space for reflection, dialogue, and learning.
Participants included representatives from the earlier Folkestone edition who grounded the workshop by recounting their experiences following the New Narratives project and how it had changed their practices. Samphire and Compass Collective, for example, both presented their experiences in planning, fundraising, and sustaining projects. Their insights set the stage for reflections on the tensions between digital presence and engagement, and on what it means to be inclusive in a digitised environment.
Digital inclusion beyond access: questioning assumptions and checking in with our intentions
An insight emerging from the workshop was that digital inclusion is not synonymous with access to technology. The assumption that inclusion requires a digital presence was also challenged, with participants expressing fatigue and a sense of obligation to maintain visibility for funders and partners rather than to benefit their own communities. The IN+ Principles provided a lens for these discussions, inviting questions: Who becomes visible in digital spaces, and who remains unseen? How do digital systems shape communication and community needs? To what extent could community driven digital storytelling projects disrupt these systems?
The case of ARK – Clifton Cultural Space, for example, exemplifies a low-resolution, slow approach to digital engagement. Originating as an offline gathering space, ARK resisted the transition to social media. Instead, the group chose to curate a shared Spotify playlist—an accessible method of connection that suited the community. This approach underscores the point that digital equity does not always require visibility or social media. Sometimes, as the New Narratives team directed participants to consider, inclusion means asking what can be left out.
Intentionality, emotional literacy, and the ethics of engagement
The workshop facilitators’ approach to intentionality reminded us of the work of Tara Brach, particularly her emphasis on leadership and clarity. Participants reflected on the importance of designing projects rooted in community realities rather than in their own preconceived expectations and understandings. This involves listening, releasing assumptions, and creating conditions where letting go—of platforms, formats, or metrics—becomes a strategic, creative and active decision.
One question posed during the workshop was: What would our work look and feel like if we removed social media altogether? This led to conversations about extractivism in digital storytelling, especially the labour expected from refugees and asylum seekers whose narratives are often used for wider (e.g., policy, organisational, legal) validation. Participants shared concerns about the ways organisations may exploit visibility, or even create further vulnerabilities, while failing to invest in co-creation or support. This resonates with findings from the Kinlochbervie and Articulate Hub projects, that talked about the unintentional ways vulnerabilities can be exacerbated if holistic approaches to digital inclusion are not considered.
Recognising the side of community engagement—including ambiguity, slowness, and care—emerged as essential to enable holistic approaches to digital inclusion that are able to consider issues more complexly and therefore better aligned to community needs. Literacy is central to care, helping practitioners understand when to push forward and when to pause, when to share and when to protect. Culture was identified as an issue, calling for boundaries, expectations, and recognition of the dimensions of inclusion.
Wayfinding Theory and Digital Design
A discussion centered on applying Wayfinding Theory—used in architecture—to the design of digital inclusion programmes. Wayfinding principles focus on non-verbal navigation using spatial cues, landmarks, and clarity to enhance user experience. Transposed into the digital realm, this theory encouraged participants to rethink how websites, platforms, and tools are designed: Are they intuitive? Are they accessible to people with different literacy levels, languages, or reference points? Are users being invited into a space where they feel welcome, or are they being told where to go?
The INCLUDE+ Principles, when read through the lens of wayfinding, suggest that digital inclusion begins before someone logs on. It starts with the cues that make someone feel safe, recognised, and capable of navigating the space. This idea links to the concept of designing for trust—recognising that access without orientation is not inclusive.
From Inclusion to Belonging: Dimensions of Digital Equity
The workshop also pushed participants to consider the dimensions of inclusion. Is digital equity about access and representation, or is it also about fostering a sense of belonging, safety, and co-creation? As one participant noted, inclusion must not become a proxy for a performance—it should reflect a commitment to relationship-building and to resisting ideas of impact that centre productivity over care.
This line of inquiry aligns with the UNHCR’s definition of digital inclusion, which emphasises access for communities. It also connects with the concept of the digital leisure divide, which critiques how digital equity efforts often overlook the importance of platforms that serve more than utilitarian vision of digital skills (e.g., employability, communication), but are essential tools of expression for displaced communities. As argued by Arora, “The digital leisure divide draws much-needed attention to motivation, driven by pleasure, sociality, and entertainment. This recognizes happiness apart of the equation of a good life, online and offline (2019a, p. 15). The New Narratives workshop allowed us to reflect on how we, as an INCLUDE+ Team, might be at risk of imposing pre-existing and potentially Western ideas of digital equity and social progress. What we take away from the workshop is the important reminder that digital inclusion work needs to be framed within a specific context that covers one’s and collective choices, belives, and motivations for doing or not doing things digitally.
Insights for practice: IN+ Principles
The INCLUDE+ Principles guided our reflection during the workshop:
- Holistic Approach: Inclusion is not neutral; it must interrogate power. Who sets the terms of engagement? Who is being included, and why?
- Sustainability: Inclusion must outlast a cycle. This demands a shift from metrics to relationships, from urgency to intention.
- Diversity: Recognising experience as expertise challenges engagement and demands processes.
- Responsiveness: Inclusion is not static. Strategies must adapt to the needs of communities.
- Collective Care: The well-being of staff and participants is not secondary. Visibility should not come at the cost of exhaustion.
- Meaningful Digital Inclusion: Engagement must feel right. It should be co-created, non-extractive, and responsive to the context of communities.
Conclusion: queering digital inclusion ?
The New Narratives workshop invited a queering of assumptions around inclusion, impact, and digital visibility. To queer, in this context, means to disrupt logics that equate more with better, visibility with value, and access with equity. It means asking: What does it feel like to be welcome? Who defines what inclusion means? And on whose terms are we building these spaces?
Digital inclusion, when approached with care, reflection, and intention, becomes less about technologies, less about transactions and more about relationships. It becomes an invitation—not into a platform, but into a space of trust, imagination, and potential transformation.