Trainings & Workshops

Listening Labs: Tools & Artistry for Connection

Even after the 2024 elections, and amidst intensifying fragmentation, some 70% of Americans — across party lines — feel they have a sense of responsibility to connect with people whose ethnic, political, religious and economic backgrounds and viewpoints are different from their own(1). The most common reason people give for seeking such “bridging” is to improve their communities. Among the most reliable reasons people do not do this is anxiety about engaging with others across these lines of difference. One promising strategy to reduce this anxiety is high-quality listening. 

Americans tend to know this. Some 80% - across party lines - think they are good listeners. Yet 66% also feel that others do not listen well. On average, approximately 50% of Americans — and 68% of Gen Z — express interest in further cultivating high-quality listening skills (2).

• The Listening Lab draws on the science of connection but is more than academic: The Lab is a place of action, where participants test tools by doing, and gather data through experience.

• Through a series of small, often playful, and safe experiments, participants explore ways to listen, models of conversation, techniques to cool the heat that often leads to interruption, initiate conversations that bypass surface chitchat, tell moving stories, offer feedback that encourages more connection, and maintain psychological safety and a realness that leaves people feeling alive to each other and themselves.

• Arts SoCo’s moving stories — told through powerful spoken word, music, and theatrically projected sand animation — facilitate generous listening with fellow participants in conversations that are honest, intimate, and alive.