What Makes A Good Partnership?
January is a time for new beginnings – whether that be a new job, a new attitude or a new hobby – the possibilities are endless. For those who are considering forming some new partnerships to bring something new to your practice or to help you to achieve your goal, we’ve got our top tips on how to keep and maintain lasting partnerships that deliver.
As many of you may know, we are a small social enterprise with big ideas and an even bigger impact. We aim to give young artists a platform to showcase their work, receive training, mentoring and get paid opportunities. We’re really passionate about the work we do – but we admit we can’t do everything (although we do a pretty good job at trying) – that’s why working in partnership is integral to what we do.
Over our two year journey, we have worked with some incredible partners who have been overwhelmingly supportive and generous. The skills exchange, knowledge and relationships that we have gained have been invaluable to strengthening our practice.
Starting a partnership can be great for inspiring new ideas, approaches, increasing capacity or adding essential expertise to a new project. They can be extremely rewarding and you don’t have to search hard for a relevant partner as partnerships can come out existing working relationships or completely new ones from a different sector or field. We’ve learnt so much working from with our partners, so we’ve compiled a list of what we’ve found makes a good partnership. Whether you’ve got 20 years or 20 minutes of experience, we all need a bit of a refresh on what the essence of good partnership practice is.
1. Mutually Beneficial
We’ve found that partnerships work best when they’re mutually beneficial and both/ all parties should be clear about what they want to get out of the partnership and what they can offer the partnership. Maybe you might want to deliver projects to a certain demographic, that you may not have access to – but your partner does. Or a particular partner might be looking to expand the programmes they offer to their participants, and you may be able to facilitate this with your skills, equipment or expertise. Transparency is important, and will ensure that you’ll be better equipped to meet your partner’s needs and expectations. When a partnership is one-sided, partners wont be equally motivated to see the project to completion or put in an 100%. So ensure that there is an equal exchange. If you want to collaborate with a particular organisation or artist, think about how you can add value and what you will get in return.
2. Have a Detailed Plan
Although it is easy to get carried away with the excitement of a new partnership, we can’t stress how crucial it is to have a detailed and thorough plan of the project before you do anything else. In your plan, establish leadership roles and responsibilities early on and delegate tasks based on resources and expertise. You should also consider the project’s timeframe, performance indicators and how the work load will be shared. When making the plan, it is key to set up a meetings to draw up a project overview and ensure that everything is covered. For example, if you are collaborating together to run art workshops in a community space, how will you source equipment and materials? Who will facilitate the sessions? Who will be responsibility for getting Public Liability Insurance? If there is a chance that this workshop will be delivered to young people, will there be facilitators there who are DBS checked? Which partner’s Safeguarding policy will you be using? How will the project be funded? Will you be putting in a joint-funding application? Or will the partners cover the costs independently or through sponsorship? These are key questions that should be considered and by having a plan that is not thorough enough could potentially cause problems down the line.
3. Constant and Effective Communication
Communication is a key aspect of any relationship – whether its personal or professional – and the same applies to partnership work. Regular check-ins and conversations, regarding progress, changes and future plans should be embedded in your partnership practice. It’s a really effective way of ensuring that you are both on the same page and working towards the same ends. After every correspondence, follow up with an email to make sure that everyone is happy with decision-making, reiterate the deadlines that were agreed, and share what you took from the conversation. This will allow another opportunity for you to check that you’re communicating effectively. Although email correspondence is often practical and convenient – especially when you’ve both got busy schedules, make time for face to face meetings – as this will strengthen your relationship and smooth out any kinks that are difficult to explore via email.
4. Utilise and Share your Strengths and Resources
Skill and strength-sharing is a key element of good partnership practice. We admit that we can’t do everything – but we have got plenty of things that we’re pretty darn good at. Before you begin a joint project, make a list of any strengths, resources and weaknesses you have and share it with your partner (s) and ask them to do the same. Recognising your strengths and weaknesses will give you both a better understanding of what you can bring to the partnership, what you can leverage and what you can gain. Go into each partnership with sincerity and transparency. Be generous with what you have and be open to receiving new knowledge, perspectives and skills.
5. Mindfulness/ Offering Peer Support.
Mindfulness should be a key part of any practice. Mindfulness is essentially being aware of where you’re positioned in relation to others and having an awareness of your impact on others too. Mindfulness is also recognising your partner’s style of working, their circumstances and the ways that projects change and develop organically over time. Partnerships work best when you set realistic expectations, deadlines and are flexible. Has your circumstances changed? Do you still have the capacity to deliver everything you agreed at the beginning of the project? Is your partner struggling with something that you have the capacity or resources to help with?
Take your differences into account and appreciate that your status within a partnership will change. For example, we’re nowhere near as big as many other social enterprises in the city, but we appreciate that we may seem massive, and well-established to others. Being aware of that really helps us recognise the needs of others and understand how we can best support our peers and offer opportunities for growth and progression. Just like individuals, each partner is unique and may be able to bring a skill or insight that you may lack or may employ different working systems to you. Use partnerships as a chance to explore the different ways of working and a great opportunity to brainstorm best practice together. We’ve found that by simply being mindful of yourself and those around you, you can strengthen the success of any project and your impact in it.
6. Thorough Evaluation and Self-Reflection
Self-Reflection is a crucial part of any project. You and your partner should be able to take time to reflect on what went well and what could be improved – and this should be an ongoing process throughout the project. We’re always checking ourselves to make sure we’re doing things the best way possible and willing to offer any feedback to partners who need additional support with this. Before a partnership project begins, take a look at evaluations from previous or similar projects and try to apply any of the constructive feedback to your future practice. When the project is half way through, check your progress with your partner, advisory members (and participants if applicable) to ensure you are on track and make any changes if necessary. Be sure to make notes of any feedback you may want to flag up at the end of the project. After the project finishes have a conversation with you partner about what went well and why and what could be improved. For long-term projects or collaborations, ensure you have designated check-in points and means to measure progress. Evaluation and self-reflection is a key aspect of any successful partnership and should not be seen as an add-on. Try and ensure that all evaluation is well-documented and in a language/ structure that is most useful to you. Be thorough and generous as possible as this is not just for your benefit, as that learning could be shared with partners, used at a later date when planning future projects, filling out future funding applications or sharing your knowledge with others.
Partnership are a fantastic way to develop engagement, audience and reach. This new year, why not try and accelerate your growth with a new collaboration? Although this certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, these are our top tips to having successful, meaningful and lasting partnerships – we hope you find them useful. Thank you again to all our partners for your continued support and inspiration over our two year journey. For more information of Good Partnership practice, check out Partnerships and Participation by David Wilcox.
Thanks,
Euella and The Rising Team.