Strategic Priorities and Plans

Understanding the complex challenges of the current moment, and believing that the acct ecosystem is well-suited to make significant, distinct contributions to addressing them, IMPACT has designed and begun activating a platform for strengthening acct.

This multifaceted platform includes aspects of our initial vision, augmented by our learning from the activities and conversations from IMPACT's first 18 months. While the full shape the of platform is still emerging, elements are already activated, drawing on the sense of urgency and the commitment of the creative and motivated people who contributed to its design. Other elements are in planning stages or are part of the aspirational, long-term vision of IMPACT.

We envision IMPACT providing opportunities for sustained, ethical attention to the emerging needs and strengths of the acct ecosystem as a whole. We think this will position acct to better advocate for creative approaches to transforming violent conflict and related challenges. This will strengthen the ecosystem because the efforts of a diverse range of players will reinforce each other in strategic ways.

Strategic Priorities

IMPACT is enacting this theory of change through strategic priorities based on acct's specific needs and strengths:

  • grounding IMPACT in principles and values of reciprocity and decolonization and supporting acct players to do the same
  • fostering connectivity and inclusion regionally and globally through in-person and virtual exchanges
  • advocating with donors and related fields for resources for acct that are strongly aligned with the needs of the ecosystem
  • supporting the formation of working groups to address acct's priority needs like knowledge generation and sharing and evaluation
  • developing approaches to coordination and strategy that distribute leadership while still ensuring stability and coherence

Ethics Team, Coordination & Strategy Team, Working Groups, Virtual Learning Exchange Team, Regional Hub Teams, Advocacy Team are all on the same leadership circle.Web of six teams, held accountable to a Leadership Circle

These strategic priorities guide IMPACT's most ambitious experiment so far: a web of six teams linked by and accountable to a Leadership Circle. The circle distributes leadership, reflecting our commitment to decolonizing approaches to governance. The circle consists of two to four members from each of the six IMPACT teams.

Plans Moving Foward

  • Develop, test, and share tools for embodying IMPACT values
  • Craft advocacy strategies for acct by working with funders committed to the ecosystem
  • Meet regionally to design hubs in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa in 2019 and follow up on interest from nine other regions
  • Continue convening global virtual learning exchanges in multiple languages
  • Reach out to cultural heritage, transitional justice, and human rights fields through publications, meetings and trainings
  • Test and share approaches to evaluation that align with excellent practice in acct
  • Design an online journal and other virtual spaces for exchange, documentation, and collaboration
  • Plan IMPACT global gatherings

Read more on team plans in Imagine IMPACT: An Emerging Strategy to Strengthen the Arts, Culture, and Conflict Transformation Ecosystem (pdf)*, which may be requested by filling out the online publication request form.

Germaine Ingram

Video: Germaine Ingram talks about the IMPACT Design Lab (4:13)

“...look at the role of research across the field and eliminate some of those silos...”  – Germaine Ingram