Communicating with Intention: Activities and Techniques for Strengthening Community Partnerships
In my last post, I asked how museums might create meaningful and fulfilling community partnerships and I offered my musings to this question. This month, I return to briefly consider a few activities and techniques geared toward establishing and strengthening community partnerships. Again, as museum staff, how do you “build genuine, reciprocal relationships with your visitors and local organizations? How do you work toward a common goal with your local community?” Below, I explore how using metaphors and walk-and-talk conversations might help those involved in community partnerships (primarily museum staff and community partners) communicate the more intangible aspects of “community” and ground their collaborations in shared understandings.
Using Metaphors to Bridge Gaps and Describe Change
The FrameWorks Institute, a “nonprofit research organization that helps mission-driven organizations build public will for progressive change,” describes how metaphorical language is “a powerful tool in social change communications.” As they explain in “Tapping into the Power of Metaphors,” “metaphors that rely on everyday objects or experiences can help us introduce unfamiliar issues or explain complex ones.” FrameWorks also states that metaphors are useful for introducing new ideas and disrupting mental frameworks. In other words, metaphors are a way to say, “How about we think about this social or community issue in a different way?”
FrameWorks offers an example. Say your project focuses on youth participants and the challenges they may face. Instead of envisioning “young people as reckless” and “adolescence as a period of danger,” “it can be more productive to lead with adolescence as a time of exploration, when young people need to test ideas, experiment with boundaries, and be able to take and learn from safe risks.” As a result, the goal of your project shifts from negative assumptions about teens to a space of understanding and opportunity: how can we aid youth audiences during a time of learning and development?
FrameWorks also stresses the importance of using metaphors early and explicitly to help collaborators get on the same page. I would add that it’s also important to introduce metaphors in conjunction with research (i.e., statistics and previous knowledge about sociopolitical systems that shape inequity, inequality, and injustice). As with the example above, you don’t want to adopt negative assumptions and stereotypes about a sociopolitical topic.
For your community partnership, metaphors can therefore be used to bridge gaps in understanding and center “change” as an important mindset among those involved. After all, metaphors are well-carved rivers or streams, giving shape to collaborative ideas and carrying them forward. And, as a literature nerd, I think that metaphors can be used to convey emotion and experience, two aspects that are often hard to communicate but essential for relationship building. For example, to assuage the pressure of creating something new, you and your community partner may discuss a metaphor by Octavia E. Butler, science fiction writer: “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” To contemplate what creativity means within your partnership, you may consider the phrase “dream out loud,” which Robin D.G. Kelley, historian and academic, uses to describe how his mother dreamed in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Or, like Casa Kolacho, a Columbian youth collective that uses hip hop and art to build “spaces of peace,” you might contemplate how your community engagement approach mirrors an art form. Figuratively speaking, is your partnership a mural? A dance? A song?
Using Walk-and-Talk Conversations to Shift Power Dynamics
In the Learning Hub, we talked about walk-and-talk interviews, “mobile interviews” where the interviewer and interviewee “walk-and-talk,” experiencing a space together. Yet, in building community partnerships, museum staff can also consider walk-and-talk conversations—non-evaluative dialogue with community partners that occurs at a designated community space, ideally one that holds value to the community partner. Preferably, this occurs at the beginning of the partnership (as a chance to build connections) and periodically throughout it. In our digital age, where online communication can both connect and distance us, it may serve as a helpful reminder of the benefits of in-person communication (that is, if both parties feel Covid-safe and comfortable meeting in-person). Furthermore, as Penelope Kinney explains, walking side-by-side (rather than talking face-to-face) can offer a different communication dynamic—it can allow speakers to collect their thoughts, exposit, and ruminate without the potential pressure of eye-to-eye contact.
Walk-and-talk conversations have the potential to marry space and narrative; they can serve as an opportunity to shift power dynamics and meet partners at their places of power. Shifting power dynamics is especially critical since museums are institutions, loci of power. Instead of always holding partnership meetings and gatherings at your museum, what if you conversed where your partner is grounded? For example, you might walk together through a nearby neighborhood or arrive at a local spot that speaks to them and/or a community issue (like a park where residents often gather or a well-trodden street block that’s home to several local stores). You may ask, “Why is this spot important to you?” Hopefully, this sparks discussion where you can connect with your partner on a human level. As I mentioned in my previous post, community engagement or partnership begins with recognizing your community partner’s humanity (and your own).
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Both techniques of metaphorical language and walk-and-talk conversations speak to a simple desire: a need for understanding and a commitment to change. Together, you and your community partner are seeking to understand each other and enact change. As such, it helps to approach communication intentionally. To not just talk, but talk with purpose.
Of course, metaphorical language and walk-and-talk conversations are just two ways to find common ground in a community partnership. And, it’s up to you and your community partner to discover what works best for you. How will you and your partner walk toward change?
