‘When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills’
‐ Chinese proverb.
A lot of research is directed at the current paradigm of sustainability, but this
research is interested in what sustainability could become… sustainability ante‐
narratives. By studying the phenomena sustainability within media organisations
this research applies ante‐narrative to realise sensemaking of sustainability, and
how this ambiguous concept manifests itself now but more predominantly in the
future of media organisations. It is with this in mind that we incorporate a
storytelling methodology to research prospective sustainability though a case study at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). This paper examines primarily
sustainability interviews, corporate responsibility reports, and sustainability
reports to understand how organisational actors are responding to sustainability,
and how the story and narrative are shifting perspectives to reveal potential
sustainability evolution. The paper also evaluates though reflection the viability of
this novel method as a tool to examine future sustainability.