Apparently, this is a thing: naming groups or gatherings – 'branding' them – makes them much more likely to stick.
It’s August. For me and 13 of my friends that means one thing: August Arting.
And yes, I’m surprised I have 13 friends too – sometimes it feels like just me and the dogs – but we are art college classmates who started a WhatsApp group while studying together and now we chat sporadically.
However, the ties that bind us were loosening back in 2022, until I set my art mates a monthlong challenge to complete a daily 10-minute drawing prompt.
Every August since, we sketch hands, pillows, staircases, whatever, and share the results and this is how we stay in touch.
But the activity has become almost incidental. The point is that we are doing this together – or just observing and commenting as the case may be – and the group is revitalised.
Every August we re-plant a flag, saying we are each other’s creative community, a not-terribly formidable tribe, but one with fabulous face paint.
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Why naming a group makes it last
Apparently, this is a thing: naming groups or gatherings – “branding” them – makes them much more likely to stick.
There’s even a book touching upon it called The Art of Gathering, by Priya Parker. As she told the New York Times: “When something has a name, it becomes easier to remember, talk about and return to.”
It’s so true. Just ask the Hell’s Angels, Cosa Nostra, Boko Haram, Men’s Sheds, my Book Club… Yes, you can call it Wine Club if you prefer, but the premise that we’re regularly reading the same book, then discussing it – and everything else – makes it so much more compelling, it’s almost compulsory.
Consider when I worked at The Citizen’s offices 20-odd years ago.
On Friday afternoons, the features department could generally be found very much in situ and in great spirits too. That’s because it was Port Friday, which started organically after a press release for Lusito Land arrived attached to a bottle of port.
Every Friday afterwards, one of us would sneak in a bottle of port – or sherry – and we’d drink it from our coffee cups.
Team-building stuff indeed.
If you want to see more of the people you care about, you may simply need to invent an excuse to regularly connect and name it – Margarita Mondays, Cake Crew – because “over time, that repetition creates culture”, Priya says.
Like the Aryan Brotherhood, the 28s, the Freemasons, the Brownies…
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