Let’s BUILD TOGETHER

 
 

Our work is all about helping you build with your communities.

Through our design services, team retreats, workshop offerings, and facilitation services, we’re here to help you and yours deepen your practice of collaboration, and support you through the hard and necessary work of living your values through your actions. We’re not (just) here to help you be more inclusive, we’re here to help you disrupt patterns of exclusion and alter the fundamental power dynamics at play in communal, collective work. 

Select an icon to learn more about what we can do together.

DESIGN

Looking to host a team or community meeting that goes beyond the surface and gets stuff done? Need to shake up how you run your conference (or unconference!)? Or maybe you’re looking for help with co-design? Whatever it is, if you’re hoping to bring to life an event or process rooted in real, communal, participatory exchange, we’ve got you!

We have extensive experience designing dynamic, creative events and spaces online and offline. Over the last 10 years, we’ve designed community forums, retreats (see more below), conferences, unconferences, global and hyperlocal gatherings, meetings of all sorts, participatory design workshops and studies, book sprints (group co-writing processes), custom workshops, community art/play spaces, audience talk backs for theatres, and much more. Bring us on board and we’ll work with your team to create the right social space for your goal and your communal context.

Contact us today to set up a free 30minute consultation and let’s get you what you need!

 
 
 

WHAT TO EXPECT

  • First things, first, let’s meet! Click here to contact us to schedule a free 30min consultation. During this call, we’ll talk through what you’re looking to do, why, your community/audience, and your timeline, and get to both assess if we’re a fit for each other.

  • If we move forward together, the first design work we’ll do will be scoping.

    I’ll facilitate at least one session where we’ll set the scene together, discuss your goals, map out the social, cultural, and power dynamics of the people involved in your gathering, and more. This work will inform not just what we’ll design, but how we’ll do it.

  • After we scope, Build With will initiate the design process. That means, we’ll roll up our sleeves and get to work to bring your idea to life!

    The design process for any given project is customized for the task at hand. What happens here depends on what we learn, devise, and decide together during our scoping session(s), and whether you want a cooperative design (aka co-design) process (with our team guiding and working with yours to co-create your project), or a more traditional design process (with our team leading design and then regrouping for review with yours at predetermined checkpoints).

    We’ll make the call with you on the right design approach for your project during the scoping phase.

  • At the end of our design process, you’ll receive all the materials you need for success with your project.
    Depending on what we’re crafting together, this may also include facilitation guidance and/or training.

    If you’d like us to facilitate, we can do that, too! Let us know when you book your free consultation.

 

selected works

Design Experiences
International Funders for Indigenous Peoples

“La Sobremesa teamed up with Build With to design and facilitate a three-day, virtual retreat for the 2021 gathering of IFIP (International Funders for Indigenous Peoples). Laurenellen led the co-design process that involved many people and experiences, from IFIP core staff, board, and other members of the coalition. They seamlessly wove in time for reflection and listening, with action and debate. We came to a very powerful agenda, which showed IFIP that a more collaborative space is not only possible but something their community wants.”

To anyone considering working with Build With, “Do it! Laurenellen is really comfortable with discomfort - the mark of any great facilitator or designer of collaborative, co-created spaces. They’re able to allow for the normal ups and downs of a non-linear process, questioning, confusion, discomfort, excitement, and new ideas along the way. They're a great steward and I would highly recommend working with them!”

– Anca Matioc, Founder and Director of La Sobremesa

The Green New Deal

In March 2019, New Consensus held a research-planning meeting in Washington, DC to help midwife the Green New Deal into reality, bringing together almost 100 environmental justice activists, legal scholars, and a wide array of climate policy analysts and workers to outline the questions, actions, and community weaving necessary to drive the Green New Deal forward. Build With was hired to design the container for this process and to facilitate the gathering. We staffed up a small facilitator team of 4 people and stewarded an array of dynamic co-writing, visioning, dialogue, and evaluation sessions, along with some group mediation, to help the assembled not only converge on points of agreement, but also hold and discuss important conflicts.

The Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

In Fall 2017, the Woolly Mammoth Theatre hired Build With’s Laurenellen McCann to join its 2017 production of The Arsonists to (1) curate a kick-off week of educational programming for the production’s cast, crew, and creative team to help refine the show’s commentary on fascism and white supremacy, and (2) develop community programming to weave DC locals into the full artistic lifecycle of the show.

Our kick-off week included workshops, dialogues, and people’s history tours from ourselves and local partners Collective Action for Safe Spaces, ONE DC, and the One People’s Project to help guide, trouble, care for, and push the production. Our community programming spanned 3 months, including open rehearsals, participatory design events (“Design Jams”) to help create stage lighting and costumes for the show, an interactive high school matinee, immersive lobby experiences, & more, with internal work to prepare Woolly to continue to practice reciprocity in its community work over time.

City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Over 2019 and 2020, Build With designed a series of trainings with an interdepartmental team at the City of Philadelphia to support their community engagement work. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic changed our plans — and Philly’s needs. We adapted, designing and leading the team through additional, virtual trainings and discussion spaces for how to manage community engagement during the early stages of the pandemic, and ran workshops on facilitating online meetings and events and caring for ourselves and others while navigating Burn Out.

”In virtual meetings I now leave extra time for tech issues, and use the techniques Laurenellen taught us to help guide meetings, deal with awkward silences or too many people talking at once, and move the agenda along. I feel more confident when I facilitate these meetings now.”

”Navigating Burnout was excellent, and there were several strategies I'll be employing personally and professionally for facilitation. The discussion on intent versus impact really helped me, and I say that all the time now in my meetings.”

City of Charlotte, North Carolina

From the end of 2018 to the end of 2020, Build With joined an interdepartmental team at the City of Charlotte, North Carolina to guide them through the process of co-creating a community engagement toolkit.

We lead the team through a process that combined Build With trainings with co-design workshops and a modified “book sprint” to write the kit together. City staff saw this process as an opportunity to challenge current practices (and department silos), and weave more relational organizing into their work, so we made sure the process modeled the shifts staff wanted to see. The start of the pandemic in early 2020 radically changed our plans, but we adapted, crafting a virtual process that used short (30min max) creative exercises that let us finish the toolkit (and update it for a COVID-19 world) without further adding to burn out.

Measuring Library Broadband Networks

The “Measuring Library Broadband Networks” (MLBN) project started in 2018 to explore how broadband measurement tools could serve U.S. libraries in meeting patrons’ internet needs. In the first year of research, the MLBN coalition hired Build With to design and facilitate a one-day participatory design workshop to invite librarians and library IT professionals from across the country to help shape this work.

Without compromising the specific questions guiding MLBN’s work, we translated the niche nitty gritty of broadband measurement into an interactive curriculum that all library staff could engage with. Together, we devised specific network tests for MLBN to run, and situated the research within the libraries’ complex, intersecting power, regional, financial, and cultural contexts. MLBN’s research went on to be a success and participants reported feeling new possibilities and camaraderie in their work.

 

TEAM RETREATS

 
 
 
 

In August 2021, Throneless Tech, a worker-owned co-op based in Washington, DC, brought in Build With to facilitate their first ever org retreat. One year later, I interviewed the Throneless team to learn more about the retreat and what’s happened since. Listen to Throneless’ Harum, Rae, and Josh share their experiences in their own words.

 

Although many teams set their vision and values at the beginning of their work together, to truly see our visions for our communities realized, we need to make sure that what guides us continues to show up in what we do and how we do it as our work progresses over time. We need, in other words, rituals of reflection and action to help call us and our work back into alignment with our people and purpose.

Re/Alignment is an action-oriented, introspective retreat for teams new and old alike. Over a few days, we’ll guide you and your teammates through (re)articulating your vision for your work, (re)establishing your values (which guide what you do to realize said vision), and making concrete workflow adjustments to ensure that these guide-stars are fully and clearly reflected in both your strategic and daily operations. Whether you’re a brand new collective or an existing team seeking to refocus together, this retreat is for you.

“My experience with Build With with Throneless was a lot of care, listening, and beautiful planning for a strong, thought-out, and bright beginning [for our cooperative]...Build With offers spaciousness for engaging in hard conversations while also making sure they stay on track and focused”
— Rae Gaines, worker-owner Throneless Tech
 

WORKSHOPS

Not quite seeing what you’re looking for? Get in touch. We excel at custom programming.

 
“I feel like having gone through Cuán’s class I’m forever different. I’ve taken other professional trainings, and I learned some core, and important, technical skills, but I feel like with this training, you just change as a person.”
— Build With Training Participant, 2019

Public WorksHops & Classes (2023 Dates Coming soon)

Intro to facilitation

Group work should not feel like a waste of your time! If you’re looking to shake up your team meetings, deepen your existing facilitation practices, or otherwise move more consciously as you lead and host social spaces, this workshop is for you.

DIVING DEEPER INTO FACILITATION DESIGN

In this 2 hour session held over zoom, we go deep into the craft of a facilitated space — from how to choose a format for your session to how to estimate time for exercises to how adapt when these and other practices when things (inevitably…) don’t go as planned, and so much more…

You’ll leave this workshop with a renewed grounding in your own personal facilitation style, practical skills you can use when planning any session, AND a draft design of a real world session of your choosing, rich with insights from yourself, your fellow students, and the instructor, that you can put into play right away.

Facilitating with care

Facilitating with Care introduces the basic tenets of what we call power-aware facilitation, a practice that proactively and reactively works to interrupt hurt and harm in facilitated spaces by interrupting power imbalances, shifting social dynamics, and otherwise cultivating facilitated spaces that actually care for the entire room.

If you’re invested in deepening your relationship to conflict, and cultivating facilitated spaces that call forward new ways of being with each other, this class is for you.

BUILDING WITH, NOT FOR

Too many so-called community engagement efforts focus on building audiences or consumers for one’s work, rather than investing in the ongoing relationships and collaboration that comprises real, lasting engagement. If you and your team are ready to (re)center community in your community engagement work, our “Building With” classes are for you.

Get to know our 10 week class here — and sign-up to be notified when applications open for our 2023 cohort.

 

FACILITATION

 

We have over twenty years of experience applying power- and trauma-aware facilitation techniques in a variety of contexts, group sizes (from small, close-knit teams to large, hundred-person+ audiences of mostly strangers), and structures (i.e. workshops, reading circles, multi-week classes, (un/)conferences, conflict mediations, participatory art spaces, audience talk backs, and more).

Our team includes one full-time facilitator, though we have a powerful network of co-facilitators we work with when more are needed.

Interested in working together? Hit that “contact us” button, fill out our quick interest form, and let’s talk details.

We’ve worked with…

COACHING

 
“If you’re considering working with Cuán....Do it. You’ll be in the very best hands.”
— Liz, a founder and CEO, & Build With coaching client
 

We now offer facilitation coaching and consultations! Whether you’re a new facilitator cutting your teeth or an experienced facilitator seeking to shake up your craft or get targeted support, this offering is for you. I offer both one time consultations (great if you’re looking for design support or troubleshooting a particular part of your facilitation practice) and coaching packages for those seeking to go and grow further.

Not sure where to start — or if we’re a fit? Book an Free Consult with me to learn more about this service.