Giving power to the people
Jo Hunter is the co-founder and CEO of 64 Million Artists. In this case study, linked to the theme of ‘civic engagement & social relevance’, Jo writes about the January Challenge and how letting participants have control of the work has increased buy in and impact, and allowed them to deliver more with very limited resources.
This case study was sourced by Culture24 as a resource for our conference, The art of leadership.
The January Challenge was initially a small experiment in 2015, looking to see what would happen if we encouraged people to take 31 daily creative challenges and do them, think about them, and share them online. We wanted to see if we could create momentum around a campaign about everyone being creative. We wanted to help people to reconnect with their innate creativity, and give people ownership of our campaign.
It started essentially as an experiment with our own personal network – not democratic at all! But gave us lots of learning to then open it up in previous[SW1] years. We ran it totally for free, and I took part in it myself, hosting the challenge and always doing them myself. Two-hundred people took part and had a really positive experience. In year 2 this grew to 750, in year 3, 3,000 and then this year we had 7,500 getting challenges by email, plus a Facebook Group of 1,500.
We had 90,000 interactions in the Facebook Group alone and had over eight million impressions across Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #TheJanuaryChallenge. Ninety per cent of people surveyed said it positively increased their wellbeing, and people took part across the whole of the UK, with a fairly even spread of participants across regions.
Each year we focused on just creating the platform for people to do it, but didn’t heavily brand it or own it. This created a really strong sense of ownership by participants and, by working in partnership with lots of regional partners, we really pushed the word out far and wide, and then relied on influencers to share out to their networks.
In terms of setting up the challenge this year, we did the following:
- crowdsourced the 31 challenges through social networks
- worked with partners such as libraries, voluntary arts, fun palaces, Arts Council England, arts and wellbeing organisations to set challenges and spread the word
- launched the challenge formally in early December
- created a ‘pass it on’ pack with materials such as e-flyers, social media gifs, press releases and posters for people to distribute about the challenge
- spent £150 on Facebook advertising to reach particular groups around wellbeing and employed a paid intern to run the challenge (these were the only two costs – everything else was done free)
- scheduled challenges through Mailchimp and Hootsuite
- worked with the intern to monitor the feeds, responding all day to challengers
- collected data on how it was going, made tweaks and changes to the challenges as necessary, kept monitoring feeds to see what we could improve
- gave onward options such as a weekly challenge, follow up materials on dothinkshare.com and other paid-for options which people could opt into
Key lessons learnt
- Give away power to the people. This year we didn’t even make up the challenges – all we did was promote it and then hand over the platforms. This means people feel like they own it and they take responsibility, particularly people in the Facebook group – we’ve only ever had one troll in four years who didn’t like the content of the challenges, and this year, when she posted in the group, there were 30 comments in response protecting and supporting it.
- Work with partners as much as possible. Accept that your own networks are never going to be as diverse as when you spread your net a lot wider.
- Let people get to know you. We really hosted the challenge and took part, and people knew that and respected it. Don’t be afraid to be yourself – people learn to connect with you if you are visible.
- People don’t need a lot of in-depth work to form really strong bonds. We have challengers now who meet in person, exchange gifts, are friends. They also used the challenges to deal with grief, heartbreak, anxiety, depression and the generally ‘Januaryness’ of January.
- Experiment. Spend little money and try stuff out. Involve people in the trying out. Let them grow it and develop it with you.
- A little money goes a long way if you’re prepared to give up control and let people take ownership and do stuff for you.
Challenges
We weren’t at all prepared for how big it got this year, and it’s made us think that next year we’ll have to probably employ more staff just to keep up with the volume of responses. But we can also use this to think about how we grow as a company.
It’s a bit relentless and exhausting because it never switches off. You have to make time to turn your phone off!
We should have been ready earlier to launch the weekly challenge and the book associated with it – if we’d been plugging that through the month, take up would have been stronger. It’s happening now, but it’s slower and a slog as a result.
While I am a massive advocate of iterative working and experimentation, we could have had more of a plan in advance for after. It felt like we fell off a social media cliff after! But now we’re climbing back up.
Impact
This year we had:
- 7,500 participants
- 90,000 interactions in the Facebook Group
- eight million impressions on Twitter and Instagram
- 90% of those surveyed said it improved their wellbeing
- 98% of those surveyed said they enjoyed the challenge
Quotes from participants include:
“I have always said I’m not creative; this showed that actually I can be, I just need to be pushed (a little) to find it in myself.”
“Since recovering from depression I’ve found making is one of the most effective and enjoyable ways of keeping myself grounded.”
“I did it last January with a couple of friends, one of whom has sadly died, so it helped me grieve too.”
“That it was not about being good at something but just trying things out and having fun – and being surprised, in a good way, at what I created.”
“Loved connection to others. Noticed more around me.”
“Daring to have a go without embarrassment.”
“Surprisingly, it was the sense of camaraderie I felt online when sharing the results of the challenge.”
“A sense that I had accomplished something during a usually difficult month.”
“Being part of something larger than myself. I felt connected to strangers, which is not something I usually do.”
We are still looking at demographics but we do know the participants are overwhelmingly female, so we are working on balancing this for next year. Fourteen per cent of people surveyed consider themselves to have a disability. The postcodes from social media data show a very diverse set of social backgrounds, but we’re still looking at all the data on this. We should have a full report by the end of February 2018.
Future plans
Over the four years, the biggest learning has been the benefits around mental health and wellbeing, so we are now drawing this out into specific programmes in this area.
We’ll aim much higher and wider with the January Challenge 2019. We’ll start earlier with the campaigning (sign up is already available) and we’ll actually do press and PR, which we’ve never done before!
We’ve also created www.dothinkshare.com, which is another way of us giving away free resources and encouraging community sharing. This is very much a prototype at the moment, but its next iteration includes user-generated content and we’ve developed the whole thing in co-creation with older people.
We’re also writing a book – which will have lots of tips in! And we’re now thinking about this model with specific relation to mental health. Using the model in smaller groups with free technology like WhatsApp and Slack.
Advice to colleagues
Do not be afraid to let other people own your stuff. It is way easier, more exciting, and more generative to do things this way. Keep experimenting and being iterative, because it lets people in.
Resources
Mainly partners:
These and others really helped us get out to all corners of the country. We also have a good pick up in the USA and other countries.
