Mission
Develop media that serve society, with creators, researchers and audiences.
Manifesto
Why we exist
OurFrame is an independent, nonprofit media and production company.
Vision
Contribute to a society where everyone can live with dignity, within the limits of what the planet can sustain.
Values
Editorial independence, facts and a diversity of voices guide our work. We share results and lessons, including when the effects we hoped for do not materialise.
Our role
OurFrame works on how creative work is funded, produced, distributed and evaluated. Its surpluses are reinvested in its mission.
The manifesto
Why we exist
We created OurFrame because we needed tools we did not have.
Ways to fund, produce and circulate journalistic and artistic work with a shared ambition: contributing to a society able to understand itself and act together.
An investigation can challenge a certainty.
A film can bring us closer to an unfamiliar experience.
A story can open a conversation we no longer knew how to have.
We want to give these possibilities the means to exist, reach their audiences and have effects beyond distribution.
Our horizon is a society where everyone can live with dignity, within the limits of what the planet can sustain.
Doughnut Economics, developed by Kate Raworth, gives us a framework for considering human needs, social justice and the balance of the living world together. Scientific knowledge and the experience of the people concerned inform our choices.
How we work
We make these choices with audiences.
Their experiences, disagreements and aspirations must be able to change the questions we ask, the stories we tell and the changes we seek. Bringing people together means making room for what divides us and finding ways to move forward together.
We bring creative work, behavioural science, the measurement of effects and funding into one approach. Before producing, we define what we hope to make possible, for whom and under what conditions. We plan the encounter with audiences from the outset. Then we seek to understand what actually happens.
Our editorial independence
Journalistic and artistic freedom is essential to this work.
An investigation must be free to unsettle a partner.
A filmmaker must be free to question our framing.
A work must be free to contradict our convictions.
Our methods help explore these choices and their consequences; they leave the investigation’s conclusions and the work’s form open.
This freedom asks everyone to take the effects of their work seriously.
We ask the projects we support to have an explicit intention and a sincere willingness to learn. We make room for works whose effects are difficult to capture or take time.
We refuse to use a cause to polish an image, make audiences feel guilty or use people without concern for the consequences.
Facts and a diversity of views are non-negotiable.
In our journalism, they are conditions for impact, never tools at its service. We verify before publishing, distinguish what we know from what we hope, and give space to voices that challenge the intended effect. Distorting a fact or excluding a viewpoint to obtain an effect is manipulation.
When the expected effects do not materialise, we share what we have learned.
We rework, test again and redirect resources when the results warrant it. We maintain this standard even in the projects to which we are most attached.
What we want to make possible
OurFrame is a Swiss nonprofit company.
Its surpluses are reinvested in its mission. From Switzerland, we want to help media practices evolve, share our tools and develop them with creators, researchers, audiences and partners elsewhere.
We want people with a necessary story to find the means to create it freely, bring it to its audience and understand its effects.
We work to build those conditions.