Our Impact

Together with our sister organisation, the FrameWorks Institute in the US, we have 20 years experience helping mission-driven organisations win hearts and minds.

We conduct in-depth research into public understanding on a range of social issues. From these insights we develop and test framing strategies to help build support for change. And we turn this into practical communications advice, strategies and content.

Our framing recommendations are rigorously tested by our team of experts. And we recommend strategies when they are proven to trigger helpful beliefs and values.

We’ve helped a wide range of change making organisations like Crisis, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Impact on Urban Health as well as campaigners with direct experience of the issues they are talking about and high profile public figures.

Framing in Action: Talking about Poverty

Our award-winning partnership with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has changed the conversation about poverty in the UK.

Through extensive research we uncovered common patterns in how people think about poverty. We found a strong tendency to deny poverty’s existence and to blame individuals for the hardship they face. But by changing the story we told, we unlocked radically different ways of thinking. People could see that the economic system shapes people’s lives. They were more likely to support government action to solve poverty, and they believed change was possible.

We helped JRF put our research recommendations into practice by training high-profile spokespeople, campaigners, content producers and activists with lived experience of poverty. We developed practical toolkits, shaped messaging and materials and supported organisations who could help build momentum.

Powerful messengers like Marcus Rashford, faith leaders, tabloid newspapers and senior politicians from across the political spectrum have used our framing recommendations.

The previously dominant “strivers and scroungers” narrative is quickly being replaced by a story grounded in the reality of poverty, and our shared values of compassion and justice. It’s a story that has shifted public opinion, reduced stigma, and secured policy change. You can read more about the partnership here.

Framing in Action: Supporting Healthy Childhood Development

Our work translating the complex science of early child development has shaped policy and practice around the world.

In the early 2000s, members of the U.S. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child found that the scientific case for supporting young minds was failing to cut through popular beliefs about childhood.

FrameWorks worked with Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child to produce a set of easily understood stories and metaphors. Since then, ideas like “toxic stress” and “brain architecture” have become commonplace.

Blackpool Better Start is just one example of a place where this language has been used to help parents, caregivers and service providers to understand the critical role that positive, nurturing early experiences play in healthy child development. This multi-agency partnership has helped teachers, nurses, social workers and politicians see the challenges parents face, so that they can better understand and support them. At the same time, parents reported being more aware of how their own emotions affect their children.

By embedding the language of brain science into the way they work in Blackpool they aim to improve policy and practice for generations to come.

Work with us

To find out how we can help you email hello@frameworksuk.org.