Abstract The writing and self-publishing of strategic texts (mission, vision, and value statements) within social-profit organisational and institutional contexts is often an undervalued yet authoritative practice. It is typically carried out to meet responsibilities toward funding bodies or to align with cooperative market logics. The development of "About (Us)" page therefore becomes often a publishing realm in which neoliberal aesthetics creep into our work, life and its representations.
In this workshop session, the practice of strategic writing is reclaimed as a literary genre within the field of visionary fiction—a form of “fantastical writing that helps us imagine new just worlds” (Imarisha, 2016).
The workshop proposes a shift away from strategic writing as a cooperative, non-fictional mode of communication toward an understanding of it as a speculative literary practice. This approach allows participants to connect, through (visual) writing, with the immaterial futures they are envisioning, and to critically reflect on them in a subsequent step. Strategic writing is approached through the literary device of spatial metaphors, which function as a vehicle to bring material and immaterial worlds into closer proximity. In doing so, the workshop challenges a perception of strategic writing as purely goal-oriented and instead activates it as a strategy for pausing and critical reflection: Which imaginary spaces will the collective engagement of you and the people you work with produce in the future? What are its ecologies? How does it welcome bodies and species? How is it equipped to tackle institutional, ideological, interpersonal, and internalised oppression? The workshop introduces a methodology designed to be applicable across different local contexts. Whereas we agree to communicate within a reflective framework in a shared language, participants are encouraged and through the use of metaphors as visual-literary practice to engage in their own languages.