# Contract in participatory process

**How and why to make commitment to work together**

Imagine that you are working in a community for example in a school class where you will step into a world of educational organization with young students and teachers and in some cases also their parents or carer. Before opening a class room door you have already negotiated with stakeholders at school, had a several e-mails, on-line meetings and face-to-face meetings with vice-chancellor and teachers. With them you have gone through an ethical process at school and at your own organisations. During that process you have explained the goals of the project you are planning to collaborate on with them, explaining about each having voluntary participation and asking their consent to be part of a project you are leading.

May I introduce you to ***Ava***, she is a facilitator who is working with various communities applying arts-based methods to participatory design. When opening the class room Ava is often enthusiastic; simultaneously excited and nervous. She has lot of thoughts and feelings. Her hidden thought might be: *How would student find this workshop? How should I include them in to a workshop? How to frame what we are doing together and why? What about teacher would they stay in workshop? How to hold leadership in participatory process? How to take care of socio-dynamics in playful way? How to appreciate each student´s point of views and ways of being?*

Next you may get familiar with how Ava builds up working commitment with student.

> Facilitator Ava: First of all I am inviting you to make an agreement to do something on mutual agreement, we could call this agreement a contract of our collaboration.

Ava is organizing a space for conversation and inviting students to form a small groups. Some times Ava will facilitate conversation about agreement with all of the participants. This time she chooses to have a start within small groups so that she could immediately sense the sociodynamics of this group of students.

> Ava continues: Please have a short open conversation about how you can take care of yourself and your classmates in an appreciative manner when working together.
>

Sketch by Anne Pässilä, photo by Antti Knutas
Ava´s background is in arts education specialism in applied drama and theater where she has learnt that a contract ´is impersonal and negotiated before conflicts starts, so if conflict occurs you are not locked in to a personal Í told you to do… and you refused´ head to head argument. It is a breach of contract – no argument, no personal recrimination. With a contract you have a strategy to move forward when the process is not working.” (Owens and Barber, 2001, p. 5 )

> Ava is smiling and looking at each of participants while saying: This contract is very relevant because the logic of our collaboration is to create ideas and make sense together, therefore we need to cherish multi-voiced interaction that assists innovation; to share ideas, visions, hopes and fears that blocks us. This type of interaction is based on trust and a feeling of being safe when idea generating. The overall context of this workshop is a global complex problem where there is no one right solution but several optional guideposts. Therefore the duty and joy of all of us will be to hold together hopeful spaces that invite curiosity and appreciation. I hope you will enjoy this interaction, collective interpretation, reflection, envisioning and making sense together.”

Students start to talk in small groups for few minutes. After that Ava inquires what are the key points of working together in an appreciative way and then they all together talk through and list things they will collectively hold during collaboration.

> Ava underlines summaries of core elements of the contract: We all will take care of ourselves and each other, not hurting ourselves, others or this room we are working in together, you are allowed to step out of arts-based activity at any time you feel like and keep on following what others are doing and letting them to continue, we are all trying to keep open curious mind and not blocking own or others ideas.

There are short term contracts for one or two sessions and long-term contracts for a participatory process that can last weeks or months, and there you could more precisely set achievable goals together. The main role of creating shared contract is to create space for participants ownership of their own arts-based action and expression. It is relevant for all actors to believe that arts-based action belongs to them. Ownership is created when participants believe that their ideas and decision making is directly affecting the direction of co-creation. (Owens and Barber, 2001 p. 7) It is fundamentally important for participatory approach that participants views are appreciated and they actually are part of co-design. (Balestrini et al., 2017; Britton, 2017).

Ava is aware that the contract is an important step towards active agency in participatory process, she has responsibility as a facilitator to enable participants and create space for ownership but she also knows she can not act on behalf of other people. Ultimately the goal is to create a space for polyphony in a spirit of mutual appreciation and respect.

**References**
Balestrini, M., Rogers, Y., Carolyn Hassan, C. and Creus, J. (2017) A City in Common: A Framework to Orchestrate Large-scale Citizen Engagement around Urban Issues. CHI 2017, May 6–11, 2017, Denver, CO, USA

Britton, G. 2017. Co-design and Social Innovation. Connections, Tensions and Opportunities. Routledge.

Owens, A. and Barber, K. (2001) Mapping Drama. Carel Press Ltd. UK. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

###### tags: `art-based methods guide` `book` `context`