21 April 2026
Our recent webinar marked the public introduction of INHSU’s Ethical Storytelling Roadmap, a framework developed over three years and co-designed with people who use drugs, researchers, and community organisations.
The session explored how the roadmap can be used in practice, alongside perspectives from three key vantage points: the organisation seeking the story, the person sharing their lived experience, and the storyteller responsible for capturing and shaping it.
Designed as a practical tool, the roadmap supports organisations, researchers, policymakers, and communicators to work more ethically with lived experience stories, helping to guide decision-making at each stage of the storytelling process.
Keep scrolling to discover key insights from each speaker and access their presentations. Please credit fully if you are sharing this content.
Brooke Nolan: How to use the Ethical Storytelling Roadmap
Opening the session, INHSU’s communication manager Brooke Nolan reflected on the dual nature of storytelling. Its ability to drive change, and its potential to cause harm.
Often people are asked to be the story, but there’s not enough control, consent or care or transparency about what could happen.
Across the sector, stories are often:
- rushed to meet deadlines
- shaped to fit funding or media narratives
- shared without long-term support in place
The roadmap was developed to address this gap. Not by removing storytelling, but by improving how it is done.
The roadmap breaks storytelling into four stages. Consent, recording, publishing, and aftercare. Each stage introduces different risks and different responsibilities.
At its core are three principles:
- Time
- Transparency
- Trauma-informed practice
If you look at each stage of the journey and apply that lens, then you’re already going to be doing a lot more than people who aren’t even thinking about this work.
Importantly, the framework is not about perfection. It is about progress.
Brooke advised looking at each stage of the journey and identify one thing that you can do. That might mean simplifying consent processes, building in check-ins, or following up after a story goes live. Small changes, but meaningful ones.
Kate Dunn: Start with relationships, not content
For Kate Dunn, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health, Indigenous Health, History and Healing at York University, ethical storytelling begins well before any formal process.
Her work with Indigenous communities in Canada was shaped by a simple but powerful insight. Health messages – in this case, around Hepatitis C – were failing not because they lacked information, but because they lacked connection.
No one has taken the time to explain to us [indigenous communities] why this is an important issue at a heart level… everyone just hands us these literature pieces and expects us to engage at a head level.
In response, her team took a different approach. One grounded in listening, collaboration, and cultural context.
The result was a film called ‘Wholistic Conversations on Liver Wellness’, through which the people involved understood the important of liver health, but a resource has also been created to educate future generations in a way that truly connects.
A key shift was moving away from placing the burden of storytelling on a single individual. Instead, they worked to distribute that responsibility across multiple voices and perspectives.
We really tried to share the weight of that story… so it didn’t just put all of the responsibility on one person.
That approach required letting go of control.
We should really be leaning in to listen… not come in with our pre-directed script, time length and all of those things.
Sarah Whipple: sharing your lived experience comes with real risks
Sarah Whipple, Community Engagement Co-Director, Yuba Harm Reduction Collective’s message was direct. For people who use drugs, storytelling carries real and often serious risks.
For people who use drugs, telling their stories is essentially admitting to a crime.
These risks can include:
- incarceration or police attention
- loss of housing or employment
- online abuse and public scrutiny
- long-term impacts on safety and relationships
They need to understand that their landlord, their employer, could see it in 10 or 15 years… that’s a very serious thing to agree to.
Even when organisations approach storytelling with care, the outcome is not always within their control.
You assume that your intention [when storytelling] is going to be the impact, that you’ll tell the story in a nuanced way in line with their values…but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what the impact of the project is going to be for them.
This creates a critical gap between intention and reality.
It is pretty devastating to see yourself described in some of these ways… even if not by the piece itself, but by the reaction to it.
For Sarah, ethical storytelling requires more than good intentions. It requires honesty. If you can’t provide them support after the project, you need to let them know this.
Conor Ashleigh: Letting ethics lead the process
For visual storyteller Conor Ashleigh (who filmed our Connecting with Care series), ethical storytelling is shaped through a series of small decisions — often made in real time.
I think it’s important to consider your process as much as you consider your output
Consent, Conor says, is not a single step. Instead, storytelling is a continuous process of decision-making.
Consent is a linear thing. It’s not a once-off. I always think of it as a continuum… from the very beginning of an idea through to that very end.
One of the most important shifts is how consent is understood.
In practice, that changes how work is done.
It means:
- checking in throughout filming, not just at the start
- paying attention to what people are comfortable sharing in the moment
- being prepared to stop, shift, or not pursue certain lines of conversation
It also shapes what makes it into the final story.
I would say that 90% of people’s stories don’t get used… out of protection.
And for Conor, responsibility doesn’t end once something is published. That might mean ongoing communication, sharing how the story is used, or simply remaining available long after filming has finished.
Taken together, his approach reframes the role of the storyteller. Not as someone capturing content, but as someone responsible for how that content is created, shaped, and carried forward.
The real-world challenge to Ethical Storytelling
Across all speakers, one challenge surfaced again and again. Time. Ethical storytelling is slower. It requires space for reflection, trust, and care. But in practice, organisations are often working under pressure.
How many times… our deadline’s tomorrow. Can you share your story by tomorrow? There’s just absolutely no way that that can be rolled out in an ethical way.
The trade-off is unavoidable: there is no way to do the same volume and also all of the things that need to happen.
This forces a shift. From producing more stories to producing them more carefully.
Where to start
While the roadmap offers advice for all stages of the storytelling journey, start with one change.
Look at your process and ask where you can do better. Whether that is:
- clearer consent
- more time for reflection
- better follow-up after publication
And Kate closed the session with some powerful advice.
Go in [to storytelling] with a lot of humility… that’s when the true spirit of story comes through.
