NTI Folx Tales
Folx Tales is a recurring conference hosted by NTI with hopes to link lives and grow community around the Narrative Worldview. It is a conference born from a yearning to relate to each other and to our work from our hearts, not only through academic ideas or prescribed therapy methods.
We’re energized and excited to be preparing our 2026 Folx Tales gathering — a two-day, fully in-person event held at the beautiful NonProfit Center in downtown Boston. This year’s conference invites us to look with fresh eyes at what the Narrative Worldview might offer us now, in this contemporary moment, in the varied contexts where we live, work, love, and resist.
As we dream forward into 2026, we find ourselves orienting toward themes of Solidarity, Radical Tenderness, and Relational Rigor. These ethics feel indispensable — and deeply generative — as we search for ways to respond to the intensifying violence, dehumanization, and exploitation we witness on this planet. We are drawing from the work of many writers, artists, activists, therapists, and community organizers, including Vanessa Machado de Oliveira of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective, who asks:
“What if collective healing will be made possible precisely by facing — together — the end of the world as we know it?”
Folx Tales is our attempt to face such questions side-by-side. To practice being together in ways that thicken hope, sharpen ethics, and deepen our commitments to justice.
Please check back here, or sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date. More event details and registration information will be shared soon.
What to Expect
While each Folx Tales gathering is uniquely shaped by the times we live in and the people who attend, our commitment remains steady: to create a lively, connective, and spacious environment where participants feel cared for, welcomed, and inspired.
Folx Tales typically includes:
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Opportunities to learn and engage with key narrative ideas and practices
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Collaborative interviews and outsider-witness practices
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Invitations to reflect on and thicken our preferred identities as helpers, witnesses, and community members
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Shared spaces for writing, creativity, and expression
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Moments of rest, integration, and movement — we are committed to not letting this feel like “just another conference day”
And yes, we’ll be continuing our beloved hootenanny tradition.
As this year’s program develops, we will update this page with session descriptions, presenters, and full schedule details.
Our Orientation
At the heart of Folx Tales is a belief that:
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Wherever there is violence or oppression, there is also resistance
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These acts of resistance are often invisible, unstoried, and isolated
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Narrative practices help us surface and honor these responses, linking lives around shared ethics and values
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Community is an antidote to isolation
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Listening traditions rooted in resonance, rather than evaluation, make possible new ways of being and relating
Folx Tales is an invitation to join in the work of world-making — to imagine, together, how we want to be living, responding, accompanying, and building in this moment and into the futures we long for.