Cohesion Campaigns
Cohesion campaigns tackle complex group challenges by addressing relationships and structures, in partnership, through a sequence of carefully planned actions.
Arts SoCo partners with a range of groups, from humanitarian, campus, healthcare and business organizations to communities of faith and neighbors working together.
Durable change = relationships + structure
Cohesion campaigns address a partner’s aim — from sustaining members’ engagement, increasing collaboration or undertaking bold initiatives to navigating change and conflict.
Cohesion campaigns pursue the aim by addressing the relationships and structures underlying the issue.
Relationships
Arts SoCo’s interventions are designed to strengthen relationships.
Key ways people experience one another can be found in answers to questions like
To what extent do I feel:
valued — as a person and for my contributions?
I have a say in decisions that affect me in this group?
I can be myself — share what I've lived, what I know, what I choose — and still feel recognized, included and appreciated?
that other group members are authentic?
that other group members are able to do what they say they will do?
that other group members have my best interests in mind?
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Relationships have to do with the meanings — often un-worded stories — people make of themselves, others, and their place in the group.
To know such subjective meanings, one has to ask — then listen.
Structure
Structures express, reinforce and perpetuate relationships. Structures include: shared agreements, how and where people meet and communicate, group decision-making processes, skills, resources, how conflict is handled, policies and institutions.
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Structure tends to be externally observable. You don’t need to listen to a person to perceive policies, institutions, places or procedures.
(To learn how people feel or think about structures is a different matter. For that, you do need to ask. However, an honest, meaningful answer requires relational conditions, such as feeling psychologically safe to express one’s perspectives and experience without reprisal).
The campaign “solves for” our partner’s aim
Our partner’s aim drives campaign design decisions.
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“Solving for" the aim means getting specific about:
Which relationships - if strengthened - would make a meaningful difference towards the aim?
Who needs to be involved?
How will these people be recruited?
What cohesion intervention(s) will achieve the needed relational shifts?
How will those intervention(s) be tailored to the particular people and contexts?
When will the intervention(s) be most impactful?
What post-intervention structures will express & reinforce the intervention's relational shifts as changed behavior?
How will we all know how we’re doing relative to the aim?
Cohesion Campaigns Require Partnership
Cohesion campaigns are not about doing for but, rather, doing with.
Our role
Arts SoCo:
steers campaign design, facilitating clearer understanding and consensus about key design decisions.
is directly responsible for cohesion intervention(s) designed to catalyze long-lasting relationship strengthening.
develops frameworks for measuring campaign outcomes and impacts.
serves as thought partner throughout.
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Arts SoCo:
helps clarify understanding of the partner’s needs and conditions enabling or blocking change.
To increase understanding in relatively brief time, Arts SoCo facilitators draw on high-quality listening, approaches to questions and communication clarity honed through expertise in mediating conflict, facilitating group consensus, teaching, and communicating across a breadth of cultural, professional, educational, economic and political differences.
facilitates decisions about how best to address those needs (e.g., from determining participants and recruitment strategies to venue decisions and, importantly, post-intervention structures).
designs interventions to strengthen, accelerate, or shift qualities of relationship to address the partner’s aim. Arts SoCo tailors the interventions to the particular aim, participants and context.
facilitates decisions on post-intervention moves that express and reinforce “invisible” relational shifts as “visible” change.
develops milestones for tracking what’s working and where course corrections are necessary.
Our Partner’s Role
Our partners work with Arts SoCo designers to:
determine the aim around which the campaign is built.
identify and implement structures before the intervention, such as primary participants, recruitment and venue choices.
identify and implement structures after the intervention. These range from opportunities for participants to continue connecting, to collaborative projects, etc. These post-intervention structures are vital because they express and reinforce the relationship strengthening. Over time, this is how impact is made.
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Our Partner:
Is ultimately responsible for pre-intervention structure such as zeroing in on the specific people who need to be involved, and how to recruit them.
Is ultimately responsible for post-intervention structure.
Arts SoCo’s interventions seek to shift the ways people relate to one another.
Expressing shifted subjective meaning as changed behavior requires external post-intervention structures.
Without post-intervention structure, such shifts go unexpressed and dissipate over time.
Depending on campaign, works with Arts SoCo on measuring progress.