1. Structured Dinner Experience with Thematic Storytelling

• Participants dine in small groups of 8-12 people.

• Ideally seated with people they don’t know or don’t know well

• Dinner unfolds with a specific theme, drawn from conversations and site visits with community members (e.g., “To Those Who Shape Us”)

• The toasts celebrate moments, small and large, or people in the teller’s life 

2. Individual Toast-Stories with Playful, Safe Motivation

• Each participant “dings their glass” at some point during dinner, then shares a brief story/experience relating to the theme (ideally one no one at the table has heard before). 

• First they tell what happened. Then they say a bit about what it means to them, or how it changed them. 

• Teller concludes by raising their glass and toasts to an element/value their story highlights, and everyone toasts.

3. From Scary to Exciting Through Deft Pedagogy

• Following ASC’s principle of “Emphatic Not-Big-Dealness” toasts are brief  - 90-120 seconds - to make participation easy even for those who are normally disinclined to speak in front of groups.

4. Establishing Safety 

•ASC’s performance (spoken word and music) sets an emotional tone, and establishes a moving values sphere, for the evening.

• ASC facilitates with humor and playful realness.

• As with all cohesion processes, ASC facilitators embody 120% of the qualities with which they would like participants to engage with one another. Facilitators model anything participants do, including singing a final toast. 

• This includes vulnerability, permission to be imperfect, permission to be real.

• Community agreements establish safety container (used across ASC cohesion processes).

• Community members serve as table leaders  — their willingness to also be real, building on ASC’s modeling, gives further permission to the rest of the table and, where needed, ensures that each voice is heard and valued. 

5. Playful, Safe Motivation

• The only other rule: The last person in each group to toast must sing their toast!

• This playful rule creates safe, fun motivation: people WANT to offer their toast early because NO ONE wants to sing—yet when someone does sing, it’s safe and met with kind laughter, support, often cheering, and applause.

• The facilitation creates organic flow — people “popcorn” toasts, following each other’s lead naturally.

1. Creates a threshold for meaningful connection

• By listening to, and sharing, meaningful moments from each others’ lives, participants wind up celebrating one another. They see each other’s humanity, what matters to each person, and feel valued as their stories are heard and toasted.

• Stories shared are ones no one at the table has heard before.

• Participants understand more of each other’s formative aspects, beyond usual roles/contexts.

• Creates opportunity to see each other’s “actual features” beyond assumptions.

• Those who already know one another — sometimes for years —  often discover stories about each other they didn’t previously know.

2. Accelerates people’s crossing over the threshold

• Structure is joyful, playful, fun — yet surprising depth occurs rapidly.

• Structure bypasses normal chitchat and surface small talk. Straight away, participants hear about meaningful experiences and meaningful people in each teller’s life. This often includes vulnerable experiences in a level of realness that leaves people feeling more alive to one another and themselves. 

• Participants experience genuine connection in a short time frame.

• Because of safety and “emphatic-not-big-dealness” even those nervous beforehand often find themselves participating organically.

• Stories often evoke curiosity between toasts. It becomes natural to ask “tell me more about…”

3. Psychological Safety Through Kind Community & Authentic Modeling

• Game framing helps reduce performance anxiety.

• ASC’s modeling of vulnerability and authenticity (120% principle) creates permission for participants to do the same.

• Singing is met with supportive, kind laughter—not mocking or alienating.

• Status becomes earned by the ways that people listen, are curious, and are willing to share.

• Ritual of toasts creates collective participation and mutual affirmation.

4. Strengthened Relational Foundation

• Feeling heard as one shares one’s story-toasts, and moved as one listens to others’ story-toasts helps 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.

•The experience gradually shifts participants’ unspoken inferences about each other and the social space between them.

• Participants who began as strangers leave feeling connected.

• Connection is its own reward, often leaving people wanting more connection.