Partnerships, power dynamics and the potential for change

Rising's Founder and Non-Executive Director, Kamina Walton reflects on how to build better, truly co-created partnerships.

We all want our working partnerships to be productive and inclusive. Ideally they’d also be progressive and a place where everyone has agency and a voice. But the reality is that many are more like marriages of convenience - where one partner needs something from the other. Within the creative sector the offer of funds has often been the carrot dangled at the end of the partnership stick.

Here at Rising we know that we’ve been named as partners on countless Arts Council applications without our knowledge. How can that be called a partnership, when one party doesn’t even know they are involved? We understand that many applications are rushed. There’s often not enough time to speak to everyone mentioned in them before submission. Lots of partners are cited because the funder encourages partnership working. Sometimes the lead organisation needs access to particular communities that smaller or grass roots organisations are successfully engaging. Occasionally it’s nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.

But I’m not here to dwell on the shortcomings of some of these practices. I’m keen to highlight some of the positive and maybe more progressive ways of working. I’d like to take a fresh look at the potential for partnerships to provide a space for co-creation, equity, risk-taking and radical change.

Let's talk power

Often partnerships occur between larger, more established arts organisations or institutions and smaller enterprises. The smaller enterprises may have more progressive approaches to working but struggle with more limited funds. In these situations, right from the get-go, power is unequally distributed. Decisions have been made, often before the partner conversations have been established, and many projects are outcome-focused. Partners don’t feel like they have the agency or the power to influence decisions or the direction of the work. Often they feel that they are just servicing the mothership.

Successful partnerships are like relationships. They often start tentatively, need to be lovingly nurtured and involve hard work. Yet in the creative sector many are short-lived, involve rapid planning, parachuting into relationships with communities, and leave many feeling unfulfilled or dissatisfied. To ensure they develop and grow there needs to be a bedrock of trust and transparency, along with an acknowledgement of people’s strengths and weaknesses and the power dynamics involved.

Honesty and openness to change

It’s important to acknowledge that, within the sector, most partnerships grow from funded work where aims, objectives and outcomes need to be established before the application is submitted. These are more likely to be realistic, achievable and co-owned if the conversation begins long before the application writing. Almost never does a funding process begin with a discussion of power dynamics, hierarchies and control, or care and ensuring space for failure. Yet these things are all fundamental to the work’s success. In an ideal scenario there needs to be time to explore the vision and mission with all involved before the funding source is even identified.

Kamina working at a consultancy session with Buttle UK in January 2020

Funders are human too

A funder may require clear engagement figures and predicted outcomes, but that well worn saying ‘The journey is the destination’ is so important and so true. To really take on board the learning that happens through partnership working there must be room for flexibility. Predetermined plans must be allowed to fail, audience figures allowed to vary. Outcomes should always be unpredictable if those that the work is with and for genuinely have power and agency within the process.

Funders recognise that life is full of surprises and not everything can be predicted. If the learning is documented and shared these diversions and divergences can have value way beyond the project. I’d like to give a shout out here to Rising’s research strand, Whose Culture, and flag up the report we’ve just published sharing our learning. Conceived as a partnership with young people of colour and anticipating a strong tech element it became apparent early on in the process that the tech was actually a distraction from trust-building, active listening, care and commitment. Engagement figures were way lower than anticipated but the quality of engagement far exceeded our expectations. Through embracing change and being responsive to the community’s needs the process has enriched the agency’s learning and our understanding of how to structure future projects and funding proposals differently.

Flattening hierarchies and the power of co-authoring

So let’s take a fresh look at how partnerships might unfold. Often, as mentioned, it’s the larger organisations who have the staff and resources to apply for funds in the first place. But surely that also means they have the time to engage in conversation and the process of co-creation. So, if you know you’d like to work with a specific partner organisation on a project then think about starting the conversation before the funding has even been identified. 

And what about the people or communities you’d like to engage? Have you thought about creating time, space and payment for individuals from those communities to write the application with you? Rising’s Our Culture project is a great example of equity, authorship and ownership of a funding process. Supported by Battersea Arts Centre’s Co-Creating Change Growth & Replication programme their process was to invite a brief expression of interest and then offer money to those shortlisted to work up a full application. This meant we could pay young people from four distinct communities to co-write the application with us. As the work was all about engaging new communities it was essential that we started from their lived experience and gave them space to shape a creative engagement process that made sense for connecting with their peers.

When we heard our application was successful these young people who were co-writers on the bid were employed as freelancers to deliver workshops to their peers. This enabled a broadening of the conversation and opened up dialogue across distinct communities. Everyone involved has learnt more about new, experimental but equitable ways of working. We promised no outcomes other than a generative process that would enrich the way we work in future. Without predefined outcomes there is genuine space for exploration, co-authoring and co-creation.

Partnership working, who is it really for?

Most of us strive for strong, sustainable partnerships in all areas of our lives. Yet how many have you been involved in that you would cite as really successful? In your experience of partnership working - whether as a lead partner, invited partner organisation, freelancer or community member - what’s really worked for you and what hasn’t? 

If you’ve been reading my recent blogs you may have started to recognise a pattern of encouraging you to reflect, embrace risk and challenge yourself and those around you to do things differently. So whether you’ve worked across multiple partnerships or are considering partnership working for the first time I encourage you to start by asking yourself these questions. 

• When you embark on your next partnership plans ask yourself why you’re looking to partner with this specific organisation or community, and where the benefit really lies. 

• Can you begin your partnership thinking with a heightened awareness of potential power dynamics and how any existing hierarchies might be actively flattened? 

• Can you take more risk in your funding applications or engage in conversation with the funder to ensure greater emphasis is on the process and that it’s not outcome driven?

• Can you use this piece as an opportunity to reflect on your partnership thinking? To work in a more respectful, considered, suitably paced and sustainable way, ensuring everyone feels ownership over the work.

Thanks so much for reading. I’d love to know whether this piece has been useful, resonates with you or generates further questions. If you’d like to chat about any of this please do get in touch with me at kaminawalton@gmail.com

Kamina Walton is Rising's Non-Exec Director, alongside Emma Blake Morsi and Laura Gabe