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Updated on December 15, 2025

The Storytelling Hat: Weaving Meaning Throughout the Mapping Project

Estimated reading: 2 minutes 103 views Contributors
The Storytelling Hat is less a role with a beginning and end, and more a throughline — a way of attending to meaning across all phases of a Social System Mapping journey. It begins before the map exists, threads through every interaction, and continues long after the map is live.
Storytelling starts in the why:

Why are we mapping in the first place?

What couldn’t we see or coordinate without this tool?

What’s calling us toward a new kind of relational clarity?

This early story may take the form of a simple invitation, a shared reflection, or an origin myth that helps ground the purpose. It sets the tone: not of technical mapping, but of living inquiry. And that tone continues.
Wearing the Storytelling Hat means sensing the emergent narrative within the mapping process — and finding ways to share it through the pathways that already exist. Storytelling isn’t always a blog post or report (though it can be). Sometimes it’s:
  • A one-sentence headline in a newsletter
  • A few lines of framing during a meeting
  • A slide shared with funders
  • A small story told aloud, in the hallway, that helps someone feel the purpose
This kind of storytelling is contextual, adaptive, and alive. It meets people where they are, using the language, cadence, and formats that already flow through the network. It doesn’t impose meaning — it invites people into it.
Storytelling can:
  • 🌱 Begin before design — articulating the vision and felt need that led to mapping
  • 🧭 Guide people through the process — offering small, well-timed reflections that keep the purpose alive
  • 🧶 Surface and name tensions, patterns, and transformation arcs
  • 🗣️ Make the map legible and relevant to different audiences — without diluting complexity
  • ✨ Evolve over time — helping a network see its own story unfolding in layers
At its heart, the Storytelling Hat reminds us:
A map is not just a tool. It’s a portal.
And story is how we open it.
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CONTENTS


Knowledge BaseContact

The Technical Process

The Social Process

Steps to Add Members on the ‘Manage members’ page

Follow the steps below to learn how to add a new member from the ‘Manage members

Steps to Add Members via CSV Upload in sumApp

If you have a list of members to add to your sumApp project, follow the steps be

Steps to Manually Add a Member in sumApp from Add Members Page

To manually add members to your sumApp project, follow the steps below. 1. Choos

The New ‘Member Activity Logs’

Why It’s Helpful Use the Member Activity Log when you want to understand: Whethe

Canceling Your Subscription on sumApp

    1. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Manage your subscription”. 2.

Downgrading Your Subscription to Tier I

1. From “My Account” scroll down to the bottom of the page to ‘Change subscripti

Choosing a Subscription Plan and Number of Projects

1. From the “My Accounts” page, navigate to the bottom of the page to the “Chang

Accessing the ‘My Accounts’ Page and How to Update Your Account Information

1. “My Projects” page of your sumApp account, navigate to the left-hand menu. 2.

My Account and Billing

Managing your Account Settings and Subscription Plans The ‘My Account’ tab is wh

Article 8: Containers, Differences, Exchanges

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