How might we...
- Base Building: How might we improve our engagement with our members/base to build power?
- How might we develop leaders demonstrated commitment and ownership of the organization as their political home?
- How might we learn what others are doing to cultivate culture as a way to create bonds among our members and to inspire confidence among our leaders to take on roles and ownership?
- How might we move more people into diverse organizing roles and responsibilities?
Hypothesis
If we learn what other member based organizations do then we can try some of their methods and make them our own.
Design
Each person has two one on one conversations in the next two weeks to survey people about what they’re doing with culture.
- Find out more about what other groups are doing to incorporate pop culture – do some one on one’s with other folks, could be in BaseLab or otherwise
Collect highlights from conversations and share them as a BaseLab experiment team.
Metrics
Everyone has the conversations
We have 2-3 ideas that feel exciting and simple enough to try in the next month.
There are 2-3 ideas that we want to consider for longer term culture change that resonate with the culture that we already have.
Create deeper relationships or reconnections with people in sibling orgs or roles.
Everyone has at least one conversation or has identified online or otherwise how a group(s) have incorporated culture into their orgs as a way to deepen and broaden their base
Not having any conversations and or identifying what we are looking for. It would feel disappointing
Bring back ideas we’ve learned about back to this team in our next experiment meeting and explore / agree on what to consider doing for the next month with our base in consideration
Learnings
-Having a consistent form of cultural activity especially singing during chapter meetings and rallies creates a deep sense of solidarity and has the power to compel others to join
-We do not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to music creation – we can use popular songs in any genre and substitute/remix lyrics rooted in our issue work
-Having a sub-committee among member chapters to lead this process is a new kind of role for member leaders to consider in our base building work
-There are multiple ways to build relationships with different organizers, co-workers, and members and engage with their culture. We just have to be willing to provide people with the space to do so.
-Everybody is looking for community, we just have to be willing to create it.
Decisions
Questions
How can we continue to do this differently?
What could be as effective if not more effective than music?
Are there a set group of members/ leaders who would be interested in incorporating music into our work?
We don’t need to be experts here – could we come up with lyrics that we test out? Try out at a meeting?