2026 IMPACT REPORT

“This year reinforced something we have been learning across North Carolina and the South: people are not short on stories, knowledge, or ideas about what would make their communities healthier. What is often missing is the infrastructure that allows those experiences to be heard, connected, and carried into the places where decisions get made. At a moment when trust in institutions is fragile and the systems that support public health, journalism, and civic life are under enormous pressure, we believe the work is not simply to tell better stories. It is to build the relationships, local capacity, and narrative infrastructure that help communities make meaning together and shape what comes next.”

— Nick Szuberla, Executive Director, Narrative Arts

ABOUT US

Narrative Arts is a Southern storytelling and narrative organization rooted in North Carolina. We work with communities to create independent media, strengthen local storytelling capacity, and build the narrative infrastructure communities need to shape how their lives, places, and futures are understood.

MAKING STORIES MATTER

We create media, build narrative power, and help communities tell their own stories.

Across North Carolina and the South, Narrative Arts works with communities to understand the stories shaping their lives and create new ones together. We produce documentaries, podcasts, photography, and other independent media; bring people together through story circles and public gatherings; and help organizations use narrative more strategically.

Our work begins with listening and stays rooted in place—connecting local stories to the larger forces shaping health, opportunity, and life across the South.

REACHING PEOPLE

We make stories to travel.

Our work moves from rural communities to public media, podcasts, screenings, classrooms, community gatherings, and conversations with people shaping policy and public life.

We don’t measure reach by views alone. We create opportunities for stories to be heard, discussed, shared, and put to work—connecting experiences rooted in particular places to audiences across North Carolina and beyond.