What IS Together Culture?
Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus! My surname is Thomas. I have ancestors who were named Thomas Thomas. And when St David’s Day rolls around, as it did last week, I try to roll out some of the Celtic my grandad taught me many moons ago. I grew up in New York. Grandpa David was a first generation immigrant from the Isles. Making sure I had a connection to the green, green grass of home included the proud display of dragon stickers, gifting of dolls wearing tall black hats, developing a deep appreciation for our true Lord and Saviour - Tom Jones, and learning how to properly pronounce Cymru.
Much more importantly, it was sitting at Grandpa Dave’s feet as he smoked and sipped a whiskey and being taught HOW to be Welsh. It would start with, “Tell me a story kid. Something I won’t agree with, and spellbind me. We’re Welsh. This is what we do.” He’d proceed to explain, start by sharing something I can relate to, soften me up. Then throw in a zinger, something I wasn’t expecting, get me hooked. As you reel me in, pepper in what I am likely to disagree with, I’ll be more open to it. This kid, is Welsh pluck. This kid, is how you can make it anywhere in the world.”
When Grandad emigrated to the States with his parents and five siblings, they quickly learned the streets were not paved with milk and honey. The siblings were split into different orphanages, across three different States, as their parents worked to earn their daily bread. Welsh pluck and storytelling across the miles held them together.
Four decades later, the creative resilience my Grandad taught still gives me a sense of belonging, identity, and a toolkit with which to live my values. Grandad knew from experience that the only thing to expect in life is the unexpected. In his way, he taught me that the only way to navigate one’s way through (joyfully) was to hold true to oneself and to keep on reimagining how to forge the path to pursuing your purpose, no matter what detours come your way. Particularly as I was growing up in the 1980's in the land of individualism, he wanted me to understand that there is no such thing as going it alone. We’re in this game of life, together.
Heather with Grandpa Dave
This isn’t meant to (only) be an ode to my Grandad. For me, this answers the question, what IS Together Culture? Much of the time, and I can understand why, folks want me to immediately explain our products and services. But, here’s the thing - they are tools that help us achieve our purpose and ‘why’ and ‘how’ comes before ‘what’ when we’re talking about creativity, culture, and togetherness.
Together Culture exists to gather a community of people who create and do so to shape a more inclusive and ecological creative economy. That’s why we’re making space to create AND to become more creative.
We spent 2022 listening and designing Together Culture with hundreds of people all over Cambridge. What became abundantly clear is that many of us want to meaningfully contribute to making this most unequal of UK cities, more equitable, more vibrant, and greener. Does that sound like you? To do that, we need to apply creativity to all the ways we organise ourselves. That’s our purpose for coming together.
How do we want to behave when we come together as a community? What do we expect from one another? What emerged from our CoDesign year is that there are four key values that we want to live as a creative community: we want to turn up with presence, we want to collaborate, we want to experiment, and we want to actively help others. Those are the values that give us a way for becoming a community.
How are we going to put this community into impactful action? In our CoDesign year, we developed a theory of change. It’s the plan for realising our purpose. It has three pillars - and we’ve designed products, services and roles for members of our community that bring that action plan to life. We made a little video to explain it all, click here if you want to find out more.
Our Theory of Change outcomes
The first pillar is helping people develop an individual creative practice. That means developing the skills that it takes to create, to collaborate, to turn up with presence, and to meaningfully help others. And it is a practice because we need tools for our good days, our bad days, and to improve our creative skills so we can apply them to all that we do. We offer Creative Workspace Membership for artists and social entrepreneurs and Community Membership for all creative citizens who want to get together, have some fun, and develop their creative abilities.
The second pillar is moving from individual creative practice to collaborative creative practice. We’re super interested in how what we see as work (and yes, what we get paid to do) is changing. That’s why our Creative Workspace Membership brings Artists and Social Entrepreneurs together. Who better to carve out entirely new types of work in our creative economy? Our Citizen Studio is a way for artists, social entrepreneurs, and all curious citizens to come together, practice our creative skills, and create new ways to build a more equitable and ecological creative economy. And what we mean by that is getting creative and collaborative and EVERYTHING we do! It’s growing and serving food, caring for one another, nurturing our environment, creating playful and expansive experiences, inventions that make life easier, sharing knowledge. When we reimagine how we do all of that to make our economy inclusive and ecological, that’s creative economy work.
And the third pillar is moving from talk to ACTION! The membership fees we pay contribute to a Creative Economy Incubator fund. In this way, we transition the ideas that emerge from our Citizen’s Studio into action. Each year, we’ll call members of the community to collaborate around a theme that we decide on together. It could be, ‘How do we feed hungry neighbours, regenerate the environment, and create new food & hospitality businesses?’ We’ll work together to develop ideas that make a systemic difference (not just contribute a piece of a pie) and then we’ll gather together teams of members who will get work prototyping our collective ideas. In our current financial plan, if we gather at least 1000 members, the Together Culture community can invest £100,000 each year to build our own new social enterprises. In this way, the Together Culture Community puts ideas into action and gives people who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to become social entrepreneurs, the opportunity to answer their calling.
Over the course of the next ten weeks, we’re going to share with you the work we’ve done thus far. If it doesn’t sound complete - good. It isn’t. How could it be? The Together Culture founders are here to create a framework and hold the space for us to collectively build a more creatively vibrant, inclusive, ecological and prosperous Cambridge.
Our first Citizen Studio is slated to open at The Grafton Centre this spring. To do so, we’ll need 500 members to join and make it financially possible. Pay it forward contributions will make sure Together Culture is accessible to people who can’t pay for membership. If you’re curious - learn more and join us here.
There’s an old saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I think that’s what Grandpa Dave tried to teach me all those years ago. I look forward to learning what Together Culture means to you. Let’s see what we can create, together.
