The Hero's Journey Is Broken: How to Tell Stories That Drive Collective Action with Matt Golding

The Hero's Journey Is Broken: How to Tell Stories That Drive Collective Action with Matt Golding

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Episode Summary

The hero’s journey is broken.

That 2,000-year-old storytelling archetype—the one from ancient Greece, from Jason and the Argonauts, from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—was built for a different kind of story. It’s individualistic, extractive, and violent. It works brilliantly for getting millions of people to watch Orcs die while Tom Cruise learns a personal lesson. But it doesn’t work for collective action.

Matt Golding has spent four years learning how to fix it.

He’s a filmmaker and the founder of Rubber Republic, a content studio he rebooted in 2019 to work exclusively on positive storytelling. Before that, he made viral campaigns—the kind that racked up millions of views and Cannes Lions awards. Comedy sketches shared across the early internet. He taught himself by doing it.

After two years working for environmental and social justice organisations, he realised they were all making the same mistake. They were telling people what not to do. What to cut down on. What to avoid. Framed around the problem, not the solution. And even when they tried to tell positive stories, people didn’t believe them.

The pushback wasn’t from ideological opponents. It came from people who agreed with the cause but fundamentally didn’t think community action could create meaningful change at scale.

So Matt created the Antidote Project.

It’s a framework for how to tell collective action stories in a way that makes people believe change is achievable. The podcast—Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else—demonstrates it in practice. Six episodes, made with Maryam Pasha and Immediate Media, each one showing how local communities are transforming the fundamentals of how we live: energy, food, housing, and decision-making.

The framework has two parts: the Filter (eight criteria for which stories to tell) and the Narrative Arc (eight steps for how to tell them).

It starts with a positive vision. It briefly acknowledges the problem. Then it shows how the idea can spread, how it’s already spreading, and how you can participate if you want. No pressure. No single call-to-action railroading you into clicking a link. Just agency.

The first episode of the podcast is about a working-class community on the outskirts of Bristol. They rewrote the entire housing policy for their area—it’s now illegal to build a home there with a gas boiler, without EV charging, or without top-notch insulation. Then they built the UK’s largest community-owned wind turbine and now make £100,000 a year from it.

That money doesn’t leave the neighbourhood. It stays in a regenerative economy. It shifts how rent, energy, and food bills flow. When money starts flowing differently, the whole game changes.

Bernie and Matt get into why “positive stories” don’t work (people think they’re nice but not scalable), why social media is toxic for this kind of storytelling (park it for now), and why global solutions are a lie we tell ourselves. Humans work best locally. Where we can see the effects. Where ingenuity comes out of community action because people can see what they need and come up with brilliant solutions.

This episode is a lesson, not an interview. It teaches the Antidote method so you can use it.

Timeline Highlights

[01:43] Matt on what he does: “I am learning how we change the way we tell stories around collective action to help us all believe we can change the world”

[02:07] The Antidote Project: “Exploring how we change the way we approach progressive and collective action storytelling... to make it feel invitational, exciting, and like something you want to join in with”

[03:55] On storytelling being hijacked: “The word storytelling has been abused... by overpaid people in marketing... The stories we tell shape the world that we inhabit... storytelling done badly has created the problems in the world”

[07:33] The podcast as demonstration: “We’ve made a podcast called, Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else, which aims to demonstrate how we could tell collective action stories in a different way”

[09:54] The hero’s journey problem: “We live in this very individualistic, very extractive, very violent culture... the hero’s journey... normalises theft, violence... That is okay because we’re on the side of these people”

[13:39] World-changing ideas hidden in humble stories: “Amazing ideas are embedded in a load of community action, but they’re almost quite mutedly, humbly shared... These are world-changing ideas, and we need to shout about them”

[14:51] The four universal needs: “The four things we identified are energy, food, housing, and decision-making. We tell all stories framed around those key framings”

[16:02] The three scaling steps: “Bring it down to an action you can take part in today... scale that up... and network it and mention the fact that this example... is not the only example... This is happening everywhere”

[17:33] Parking social media: “Social media... has toxic algorithms. It drives storytelling behaviours and habits that are not very helpful. So let’s park that one”

[19:51] Why positive stories failed initially: “A lot of the pushback we got... they just fundamentally didn’t believe that this stuff would ever create a scale of change that was meaningful”

[22:28] The Antidote goal: “How do you change the shape of storytelling to overcome that... and start to re-find that truth that together we can create big change?”

[26:00] Humble beginnings matter: “We don’t tell any stories from communities who exhibit elements of what others could perceive as privilege... Let’s tell those stories... to prove that you don’t need amazing, stupid expertise to do this stuff”

[29:09] Plural invitations: “We make sure that invitation is plural... We have to allow people agency in how they participate”

[31:51] The Bristol example: “In Bristol, the community... rewrote the entire housing policy for their area... then went on to build the biggest community-owned wind turbine in the country and make 100 grand a year from it”

[36:14] Why local works: “We’ve created a culture through globalisation that allows us to take more responsibility than we’re cognitively capable of... But how we do work really well is... with our communities around us, where we can see the effects”

The Problem: Traditional Storytelling Was Built for Extraction

Storytelling has been hijacked by marketing.

That’s the first thing to understand. The word itself has been co-opted by overpaid people in agencies to describe what they do when they’re really just selling stuff. Bernie describes it perfectly: the social media week events ten years ago, full of blokes in skinny jeans two sizes too tight and £400 black-framed glasses saying, “It’s all about the narrative. Storytelling is the transformation of seamless integration.” Meaningless jargon.

But the problem runs deeper than marketing. It’s in the structure itself.

The dominant storytelling archetype in Western culture is the hero’s journey. It comes from Aristotle’s Poetics, the original backbone of Western narrative. It’s 2,000 years old. It governs nearly every blockbuster film, every novel on the bestseller list, every story we’ve been told since childhood.

The hero has a want (bring peace to the galaxy) and a need (overcome a personal flaw). They go on a journey. They face obstacles. They achieve the want by fulfilling the need. The End.

Here’s the problem: that structure is individualistic, extractive, and violent.

Think about Jason and the Argonauts. Page one: this group of people set out to steal the golden fleece. Theft is normalised immediately. There’s death involved in getting it. But that’s fine because we’re on the side of these people. They’re the heroes.

Or think Star Wars, think Lord of the Rings. Hundreds of Orcs die. Stormtroopers become cannon fodder. All kinds of destruction happens. But as long as we’re following the main character’s emotional learning, the structure works.

This justifies so much damage in our culture.

The hero’s journey puts the individual at the centre. It celebrates competition, dominance, and overcoming the “other.” It requires a villain. It normalises extraction (taking what you need from the world) and violence (destroying what stands in your way).

Community change requires the opposite. Humility. Collaboration. Shared agency.

The hero’s journey can’t support that. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

The Second Problem: Positive Stories Don’t Work Either

Matt tried the obvious fix.

In 2019, he rebooted Rubber Republic to work only on positive storytelling—films and campaigns for organisations doing good work. For two years, he made content for environmental and social justice groups. But he kept hitting the same wall.

The stories were still framed around the problem.

A typical community action video might be 7-10 minutes long. It would spend most of that time talking about the crisis—climate change, inequality, housing insecurity. Then it would get to some ideas, but the ideas wouldn’t be contextualised in an exciting, empowered way. They’d be shared humbly, almost mutedly. The organisations weren’t blowing their own trumpet.

That humility is lovely. But the ideas are world-changing, and they deserve to be shouted about.

Matt decided to go all-in on positive stories. Set up a YouTube channel. Tell 50 stories of amazing community action. See what happened.

It didn’t work.

The pushback wasn’t from people who disagreed ideologically. It came from people who agreed with the cause. They just didn’t believe community action could create meaningful change at scale.

That belief is the real barrier.

We’ve all grown up in a culture that celebrates individual achievement. Build your million-pound business. Get on Dragon’s Den. Compete, hustle, win. The system is so individualised that when you say, “Together in our communities, if we all did an hour a week, we could change the world,” people don’t believe it.

The internal pushback is stronger than any external opposition.

That’s what Antidote is designed to overcome.

The Solution: The Four Universal Needs

Collective action has to focus on collective interests.

That’s the foundation of the Antidote framework. Not all stories unify people. In this moment, we need stories that bring us together.

Take climate as an example. 89% of people support climate action. But support doesn’t pay the rent.

We’re living through massive inequality, a cost-of-living crisis, huge tension and division. A lot of people, while supporting climate action, don’t feel it’s their main day-to-day concern. They just need to pay the rent. Put food on the table.

Climate isn’t a collective interest right now. Not in the way energy bills are. Not in the way housing affordability is.

So Antidote focuses on four universal needs that everyone cares about, regardless of politics or ideology:

1. Energy
2. Food
3. Housing
4. Decision-making

Every story is told through one of those four framings.

This changes the conversation. You’re not leading with “Here’s why climate change is bad.” You’re leading with “Here’s how a community brought down their energy bills, created jobs, and gave themselves control over their future.”

The climate action is embedded in the story. The environmental benefits are there. But they’re not the hook. The hook is something everyone can relate to: lower bills, affordable housing, food security, having a say in what happens in your neighbourhood.

That framing brings people together. It doesn’t push them apart.

The Filter: Eight Criteria for Which Stories to Tell

Once you know the four universal needs, the next question is: which stories actually work?

Matt reverse-engineered this by figuring out what doesn’t work. After trying to tell collective action stories in lots of ways and watching them fail, he grouped the pushbacks and created a filter. Stories that pass the filter have a fighting chance. Stories that don’t will always hit a wall.

Here are the eight criteria:

1. Unexpected Success

Humans still respond to interesting stories. It has to be surprising, exciting, something that makes you think, “Wait, they actually did that?”

2. Addresses a Universal Need

It has to be about one of the four things: energy, food, housing, or decision-making. This is what makes the story unifying instead of divisive.

3. Humble Beginnings

No stories from communities that exhibit privilege—whether financial, racial, social, or educational. This includes not having undue training or expertise. The best work is being done by communities that are relearning everything from scratch.

Why? Because you don’t want to create individual heroes like Elon Musk. You want to prove that normal people in normal neighbourhoods can do this without needing amazing, stupid expertise.

4. Locally Spreadable

It has to be something that could work where you are. Don’t tell a story about fixing a harbour if most towns don’t have a harbour. The idea has to be portable.

5. Viable Economic Model

It has to prove different economic systems are possible. Not a charity. Not dependent on grants forever. A way to do things that could become economically self-sustaining and wash its own face.

6. Part of a Movement

The story has to be one example of a bigger pattern. This isn’t the only community doing this. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, experimenting with the same idea.

7. Offers Clear Ways to Participate

You can’t tell a story about something people can’t join. There has to be a way to get involved, and it has to be accessible to people without deep or unusual skills.

8. No Single Call-to-Action

Don’t end with “Click this link and sign this petition.” That makes people feel railroaded. Offer multiple ways to participate. Give people agency in how they engage.

The Narrative Arc: Eight Steps for How to Tell the Story

The Filter tells you which stories to tell. The Narrative Arc tells you how to tell them.

This is where traditional collective action storytelling goes wrong. Even with a great story, if you tell it badly, people won’t believe it.

Here’s the eight-step arc:

1. Open with a Values Connection

Start with what we all care about. What universal need is this addressing? Why should anyone care? Don’t bury the lede.

2. Lead with the Vision

Tell the positive thing first. What’s been achieved? What’s the amazing, visionary idea this community brought to the table? Don’t be ashamed. Sell it. This is brilliant stuff.

3. Acknowledge the Crisis (Briefly)

Yes, there’s a problem. Yes, it’s important. But assume your audience already has lived experience of it. You don’t need to spend ten minutes explaining why housing is unaffordable. They know. Acknowledge it and move on.

4. Show the Spreadability

Bring it down to an action you can take part in today. Then scale that up. What would society look like if this idea spread everywhere? Picture that future. Make it tangible.

5. Network It

Mention that this example is not the only one. This is happening everywhere. There are 999 other examples of regenerative agriculture across the UK. There are hundreds of communities experimenting with different ways to provide homes.

6. Mention the Movement

Identify the wider pattern and name it in the story. This local action is part of a bigger, ongoing change.

7. Plural Invitations

Offer multiple ways to get involved. Not “Click this link.” Not one rigid call-to-action. Give people options. Respect their agency.

8. No Pressure

Make it clear: you’re busy, we understand. If you want to get involved, here’s where you start. But it’s up to you.

The Bristol Example: What It Looks Like in Practice

The first episode of Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else is about a working-class community on the outskirts of Bristol.

They rewrote the entire housing policy for their area.

It’s now illegal for any developer to build a home there with a gas boiler. Every new home must have an electric car charging point. Every new home must have top-notch insulation. The community came together and rewrote the legal underpinning for developers coming into their area to make sure the houses that get built comply with what local people want.

Then they went further.

They built the UK’s largest community-owned wind turbine. You can see it from the motorway—three white blades turning money back into the neighbourhood. It generates £100,000 a year. That’s real money. Not a grant. Not a subsidy. Profit from the wind.

That money doesn’t go to a corporation. It doesn’t leave the neighbourhood. It stays in the community. It shifts how rent, energy, and food bills flow. It moves money into a regenerative, well-being economy.

Over time, this changes the game. Because when money starts flowing differently, you’re empowering people to make decisions in a different way. You’re doing it with the bits of your life that you need to survive, and where most of your money goes.

This is transformative action on housing and energy. Two of the four universal needs.

The story is exciting. It’s unexpected. It came from humble beginnings (a working-class neighbourhood, not a think tank). It’s spreadable (other communities can rewrite local policy and build community-owned energy). It has a viable economic model (£100k a year). It’s part of a movement (dozens of community energy projects across the UK). And you can get involved (there are resources, networks, and examples to learn from).

That’s the Antidote framework in practice.

Why Social Media Is the Wrong Platform (For Now)

Bernie asks about attention spans and social media. Matt’s answer: park it.

“Social media... has toxic algorithms. It drives storytelling behaviours and habits that are not very helpful. So let’s park that one.”

This is deliberate. Matt’s background is in viral campaigns. He created content that millions of people watched online. He knows how to make things shareable. But he’s choosing not to optimise for that.

Why?

Because social media platforms are driven by engagement metrics that reward outrage, division, and performative content. The algorithms push storytelling in directions that are fundamentally unhelpful for collective action.

So Antidote focuses on reshaping the storytelling habit first. Get the narrative structure right. Prove it works in podcasts, in films, in community screenings of documentaries like Actionism. Build the muscle for how to tell these stories.

Then, once the habit is solid, you can think about how to deploy it on social media. But that’s step two, not step one.

Why Local Beats Global

Global solutions are a lie we tell ourselves.

TED Global. Davos. The UN Climate Summit. Everyone wants to talk about planetary-scale change. But humans aren’t wired to work at that level.

Bernie puts it bluntly: “I can watch ICE Agents screwing over my friends in America on YouTube all day, but it doesn’t make a difference in my neighbourhood.”

He’s right. The example he gives is TEDx Birmingham in 2013. That local, focused event led directly to what is now Civic Square—a lasting civic infrastructure project. That’s worth more than flying to Davos.

The problem with globalisation is that it allows us to take more responsibility than we’re cognitively capable of. Sitting in a room at Davos, trying to figure out how to affect 8 billion people—that’s not how humans work well.

We work brilliantly at the local level. Where we can see the effects.

If we do this, that happens. Are we happy with that? Yes or no. Do we want to change it? Can we? Let’s be creative.

Ingenuity emerges from community action when people can see what they need. They can see how to create it. They can see the economic and environmental effects. They come up with brilliant solutions when they can see those connections.

That’s where the real change happens. In neighbourhoods. Where brilliance, kindness, collaboration, creativity, and connection come to the fore.

And when one community finds a solution that works, they can share it with others. The idea spreads. Progress speeds up.

That’s how you change the world. Not from Davos. From your street.

The Actionism Documentary and Community Screenings

Bernie mentions the Actionism documentary—the film by Ellie, Jon, and the Re-Action Collective—and suggests showing it in coworking spaces.

Matt knows the team. He’s part of the wider community they’re building. He loves what they’re doing.

The suggestion is simple but powerful: show the film in your coworking space. Invite people from the local area. Not to get them to sign up for a desk. To connect with the local community.

The way the documentary works is that people start talking about things they might not have talked about if they met in the queue at Tesco. It instigates conversations. It creates the conditions for collective action to emerge.

That’s a very simple thing a coworking space can do. And it has a lot of value for the community around it.

It’s also a perfect example of the Antidote framework in action. Local. Accessible. Practical. Invitational.

The Disconnect Problem

The economic system runs on distance.

We don’t see the harmful effects of the things we do. The things we buy. The systems we participate in.

That distance allows harm to happen. It’s where the myth of “human nature” lives—the idea that we’re all competitive, cutthroat, selfish. “If you don’t do it, somebody else will.”

That’s rubbish.

When people understand the connection between their actions and the way those actions affect the world, they’re brilliant. Kind. Generous. They don’t harm others. They don’t damage the environment or other communities.

The problem is that globalisation has created so much distance that we can’t see the effects anymore.

That’s why local action works. You can see the connections. You can see the results. You can adjust, create, and collaborate. And when that happens, human ingenuity kicks in.

This is why Antidote tells stories about neighbourhoods. About food, energy, housing, and decision-making. About things you can see, touch, and change.

Because that’s where people work well. That’s where change happens.

Links & Resources

Matt Golding’s Work

• Screw This, Let’s Try Something Else - Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
• Antidote Live on Instagram
• Antidote_Live on TikTok
• AntidoteLive.studio - Website and resources
• Rubber Republic - Matt’s content studio
• People are getting active to make our future better all across the UK. Find a project near you by popping your post code into the Antidote search tool.

Related Projects & Resources

• Actionism Documentary - Film by Ellie, Jon, and the Re-Action Collective
• Re-Action Collective - Community building around collective action storytelling
• Immediate Media - Podcast and magazine company (Radio Times, Good Food, Gardeners World)

Further Exploration

• Edward Said, Orientalism - On how the West invented the East through storytelling
• Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces - The source of the hero’s journey archetype
• Aristotle’s Poetics - The original backbone of Western narrative structure
• Syd Field: The Art of Visual Storytelling

Related Events & Communities

• European Coworking Day - 6th May
• Unreasonable Connection - London Coworking Assembly Forum 19th May 2026
• London Coworking Assembly
• LinkedIn Coworking Group

Bernie’s Projects

• London Coworking Assembly 5-Day AI Crash Course for Coworking Spaces
• Connect with Bernie on LinkedIn

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