What is NarraFirma?

NarraFirma is a web application that supports participatory narrative inquiry (PNI): a method in which ordinary people share ordinary stories so they can discover insights they can use. It is designed to help a community or organization carry out its own PNI project from start to finish, rather than only collecting stories. It was written by Paul Fernhout and Cynthia Kurtz, who also wrote the book on PNI, Working with Stories.

What problem it addresses

Most tools for gathering stories stop at collection. NarraFirma is built around a different premise: stories are useful when the people who told them also work with them. PNI is described as a form of participatory action research in which groups share and work with stories of personal experience to understand each other and make collective sense of complex issues. The emphasis is on values, beliefs, feelings, and perspectives as they come through lived experience.

That makes it a fit when the goal is collective sense-making, not measurement. The site gives examples of the kind of work this supports:

• A community market board listened to customers to keep the market going strong.
• Managers found their people were overworked because everyone assumed everyone else should do more.
• Two companies merging shared stories to work out how their cultures could fit together.
• A police force overturned long-standing assumptions about when, where, and why people steal.

How it works in practice

NarraFirma is described as several things at once:

• A checklist. It provides practical guidance as you work, with questions to answer, recommendations based on the conditions you describe, activities that help you make decisions, and just-in-time advice.
• A journal. It helps you keep a record as the project proceeds.

So the application is less a story-upload form and more a structured process companion: you describe your situation, it responds with guidance, and you move through decisions with a written trail behind you.

Who it is for

It suits someone who wants to run a PNI project themselves — a community group, an organization, a facilitator — and wants method support rather than a blank page. If you only need to collect responses at scale, a survey tool will do that more directly. If you need a group to interpret its own experience and act on it, PNI is the relevant method and NarraFirma is the tool built for it.

Where to start

• Read the method. Working with Stories in Your Community or Organization is the book on PNI, and the site points to it as the full explanation.
• Try the software. The site offers a "Try it!" entry point, along with installation, GitHub, WordPress, and FAQ links.
• Learn by doing. Online, project-based PNI practicum courses are offered for people who want guided practice.
• Get support. Cynthia Kurtz offers support, training, and consulting.

The site also has a "Why listen to stories?" section and a fuller explanation of what PNI is, both worth reading before committing to a project.