Mission, Core Commitments & Values
Mission
Arts for Social Cohesion’s mission is to harness excellence in performing arts & educational pedagogy, informed by social psychology, to help civic, business, educational & cultural communities navigate complex challenges with greater creativity & resilience.
ASC’s mission is driven by several convictions:
That every person has a story that matters, that being seen and understood is a basic human need, and that artists, and the performing arts, can contribute in necessary, unique ways to seemingly disparate realms.
Our work is also grounded in these commitments/values:
We strive for excellence, characterized by:
• Rigorous artistic/production standards; AND
• Emotionally resonant content; AND
• Relevance to people’s lived experiences.
Excellence
Moving stories can serve as powerful agents for conversation: A coming together to listen to one another and share our stories in the service of exploring who we are and who we wish to be, building an understanding of how the other has come to see what they see, believe what they believe and know what they know. Equipped with well-crafted questions — fueled by genuine curiosity and inviting honesty, dignity and aliveness —conversation promotes a willingness to be vulnerable; to be surprised; to NOT have quick, easy answers; to suspend assumptions; to probe ambiguity. Conversation does not necessitate agreement or common ground other than the mutually held principle that we are humans worthy of being heard and understood.
Conversation
Generous Listening
The human encounters enabled by the willingness to listen to others’ stories, perspectives and experiences — especially when different from our own — can open opportunities for transformation. Listening transforms the ways people speak. And their stories, in turn, can help illuminate what is at stake in the choices we make, in personal, human terms.
We are fascinated with the unspoken norms, values and emotional geographies through which we interpret events around us. These are stories we unknowingly tell ourselves about ourselves and how we relate to each other and our surroundings. These stories are like the air we breathe: most often they go undetected. Like travelers who realize their own ways are not universal when visiting different cultures, we often recognize these tacit stories when we run into their boundaries: by encountering norms, values and emotional terrain different from our own through experiences moving enough to make a personal connection. This is one of the gifts of the performing arts, and especially of story.
Exploration
Our ability to contribute is enabled by the extent of our artistic, pedagogical and organizational acumen.
We continuously push the boundaries of our skills, understanding and operations to heighten our efficacy. This requires a commitment to iteration, experimentation and revision, even when uncomfortable.
Learning
We commit to listen actively, communicate clearly and invest in our partners to build long-term relationships of generosity and trust. We design programs and projects around mutual definitions of success, needs, skills, opportunities and constraints.