How to Do Things with Groups
A Workshop with Groups Group

Presented as part of An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together

Sunday, October 4th 2026, 3-7pm
TICKETS HERE

No individual, however isolated in time and space, can be regarded as outside a group or lacking in active manifestations of group psychology.”
—W. R. Bion

Groups group is a collective of clinicians, organizers, writers, artists, and scholars interested in group dynamics in the everyday life of social movements. This project developed from a shared experience: groups we believe should exist and succeed—from autonomous collectives to large organizations—struggle with difficult and often unexamined inter-psychic group dynamics. We draw from a range of literature and approaches including psychoanalysis, systems thinking, and leftist traditions to build a shared vocabulary of concepts that help us notice and name latent group dynamics.

This deep study session will provide opportunities for participants to reflect on various dimensions of institutional and group life. How do groups come together and come apart? What dynamics contribute to group breakdown? In what ways do unconscious processes shape group norms? To what extent do individual members hold feelings and desires on behalf of the group as a whole? How does authority and leadership circulate within a group? What might these modes of inquiry have to tell us about organizing for social and political change?

Throughout the workshop, participants will be introduced to methods for investigating the mess of group experience. Engaging in experiential exercises, we will generate case studies as jumping off points for collective study. Together we will listen to, narrate, and map experiences in groups, to help us investigate conscious and unconscious aspects of groupness.

About the Groups Group

Groups Group is a collective of clinicians, organizers, writers, artists, and scholars interested in group dynamics in the everyday life of left social movements. We also do internal process work, popular education, and consult with groups.

About An Endless Meeting

An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together is a multi-pronged project taking place this fall at Vox Populi that activates collective process as subject, form, and method. Spanning exhibitions, a curatorial residency, public programs, and a print publication, the project explores the politics of collectivity, inviting broad publics to reflect on their own experiences of collaboration. An Endless Meeting will be presented as part of Collective Futures, a citywide initiative bringing together artist-run and community-based organizations to examine collective cultural production.

An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

About The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.