About Arts for Social Cohesion
What is ASC?
ASC increases group connection and collaboration across differences by strengthening relationships of dignity, psychological safety and mutual regard. Such relationships build resilience and capacity for groups to thrive through inevitable challenges and changes.
To do this, ASC combines powerful artistic experience with pedagogy to orchestrate conditions making it psychologically safe and easy for people to: be curious, listen generously, get real and connect emotionally in ways that feel alive.
Rather than general exhortations (You belong! Be kind!), these conditions address peoples’ normally silent beliefs and inferences about themselves, others and social situations. For example, ASC cohesion processes create situations that shift an unvoiced “am I safe with you?” to “because I feel safe with you, I can afford to listen to you, be more curious, and share more of myself.” These narratives self-reinforce, such as when a listener’s genuine interest in a teller’s experience increases the teller’s sense of feeling understood. This encourages greater openness in sharing — in turn reciprocated with deepened empathy and interest, irrespective of agreement etc. Such snowballing often carries over to subsequent interactions.
The Center for Combating Antisemitism recently identified ASC as one of three "high potential and high impact…strategic community-based projects well-positioned for moving the needle" toward deeper cross-community understanding. ASC was the sole arts-based initiative.
(Quotes from Center for Combating Antisemitism; Melissa Garlick, Associate Vice President, Center for Combating Antisemitism)
WHO LEADS ASC?
ASC is led by Regie Gibson, inaugural poet laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and composer/educator Guy Mendilow.
ASC’s strength lies in synthesizing:
Rigorous artistry. For example, Regie is MA’s inaugural poet laureate. Guy has been arranging for/directing ensembles on international stages since age 13 (e.g., National Concert Hall, Taipei, Taiwan). Both honed their craft touring and directing on leading performing arts stages since 1998, from Celebrity Series of Boston and “Promised Land” at Oprah Winfrey’s home to the Krannert Performing Arts Center;
Pedagogical expertise (e.g., Professorships at Berklee College of Music; Advanced pedagogy degrees; Residency design from the Navajo Reservation and rural Midwest to metropolitan centers since 1996);
Best practices in social psychology, emphasizing seemingly small, precise moves that, when carefully tailored, targeted and timed, make long-lasting, even snowballing impacts in people’s beliefs and inferences about themselves, each other and social situations.
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ASC’s Compass
ASC is guided by three generations of family lifework efforts to create spaces where people who were considered “less than” would be respected as equals worthy of full regard. For example, Guy’s maternal grandparents smuggled Jews out of fascist Hungary in WWII, then founded a residential humanist home for youth at risk premised on full societal integration. Guy’s paternal grandmother founded Yad LaKashish / Lifeline for the Old striving for elders' dignity, sense of purpose and contribution — whether European, Mediterranean or North African — since 1962. ASC also draws on its directors’ lived experiences and background in strengthening dimensions of belonging, verified by decades of replicated social psychology studies, showing that:
People can afford to be more collaborative, creative and innovative in relationships in which they feel:
— Valued as people and for their contributions;
— Agency (rather than being acted-upon); and
— Safety to express perspectives and experiences without fear of punitive repercussions (e.g., Dweck, Cohen, Edmondson);
Such relationships form a social infrastructure persisting beyond any single agenda, increasing a community’s capacities to navigate current and unknown future challenges (e.g., Putnam, Industrial Areas Foundation);
Being moved by a person’s story catalyzes such relationships. Stories help us “human” each other, increasing empathy and elevating shared identities above differences. The curiosity to understand experiences & circumstances underlying someone’s perspectives and choices requires neither agreement nor equivalence (e.g., Aron)
Such relationships are their own reward as sources of wellbeing and joy (e.g., Walton)
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Not 911: Expanding, Cultivating, Reimagining
ASC does not provide emergency intervention (e.g., when an issue becomes too hot). That is the work of conflict mediators. Instead, ASC helps build the muscle that groups flex to constructively engage together.
We work in three main contexts:
Expanding — helping members of already strong, collaborative groups see more of one another. Further deepening bonds strengthens trust, psychological safety and dignity that, in turn, increase a sense of wellbeing and collaboration.
Cultivating — helping communities strengthen relationships proactively, preventing inevitable tensions from erupting into crisis. The stronger this relational foundation is, the greater the group’s the greater the group’s capacities to collaborate through friction, channeling disagreement into productive adaptation together.
Reimagining — helping those so exhausted from the stuckness of us vs. them that they become willing to try something bold: pause, step back from “the issue” and complicate the narrative (!) — beyond the monster masks pinned on each other. What have “they” been through that brings them to see, believe and choose as they do? What matters to them in their lives? What are their hopes and fears? While necessitating neither agreement nor endorsement, understanding more of each other’s complex humanity and underlying values opens possibilities for perceptions about disconnect to loosen, making paths forward together at least conceivable. Subsequent mediation efforts building on this relational foundation are often more effective (2).
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1. See Ripley, A. (2018, June 27). Complicating the narratives. Medium. https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63 and also
Coleman, P. T. (2021). Complicate — embrace contradictory complexity. In The Way Out: How to Overcome toxic Polarization. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/cole197402. See for example Bruneau, E. G., & Saxe, R. (2012). The power of being heard: The benefits of ‘perspective-giving’ in the context of intergroup conflict. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 855–866. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.017 and also
Boca S, Garro M, Giammusso I, Abbate CS. The effect of perspective taking on the mediation process. Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2018 Sep 27;11:411-416. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S168956. PMID: 30310336; PMCID: PMC6166753,
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6166753/pdf/prbm-11-411.pdf
White, S., Schroeder, J., & Risen, J. L. (2021). When “enemies” become close: Relationship formation among Palestinians and Jewish Israelis at a youth camp. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(1), 76–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000331
Merrilees, C. E., Taber-Thomas, B. C., & Klotz, M. (2024). Promoting radical empathy: Changes in empathy and perspective taking at a youth summer camp that centers restorative practices. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 42(2), 279–288. https://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21445
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ASC’s History
Founded in 2024, ASC builds on two decades of the Guy Mendilow Ensemble's touring and residency experience. The organization also incorporates a two-year piloting phase (as Inquiry Arts) that tested initial methodologies. In bringing on Regie Gibson as Co-Artistic Director, ASC also draws on his extensive performance and pedagogical expertise since 1998, and on the seven multidisciplinary productions Regie and Guy have co-written and co-directed since 2017. Core cohesion processes were likewise honed for years prior to organizational launch. For example, Regie steadily evolved Ponder to Page across myriad iterations with hundreds of students since 2019 while the Listening Lab extends back to Guy’s organizational consensus facilitation and training leadership since 1997.
While the founders' previous artistic work generated social benefits, ASC formed to make group resilience and social cohesion the primary mission, developing and testing methodologies integrating evidence-based applied social psychology with artistic and pedagogical designs. ASC partners with rigorous evaluators and organizations working at the intersection of science and practice such as the TogetherUP Institute, a Boston-based non-profit helping to grow a national movement of towns and cities committed to connection and collaboration across differences. The TogetherUP Institute is led by Dr. Nichole Argo, lead author of the Belonging Barometer: The State of Belonging in the US, a new, multi-faceted measure of belonging that has been used broadly across sectors since its release in 2023. ASC also partners with Incevia Policy Partners, led by Dr. Hannah Thomas. Dr. Thomas applies over two decades steering mixed-method evaluation on thriving communities, guaranteed income and programs to address structural drivers of inequality with firms such as Abt Global, where she is Principal Associate. Through such evaluation, ASC aims to refine its own practices, demonstrate arts-based interventions’ contributions in cohesion/resilience ecosystems, and systematically train other artists in ASC approaches.