Increasing ownership of the Duke NUS new mission statement and transforming Groups into a Community
Aligning students with a shared vision, cultivating collective creativity and reviving their campus building.
CLIENT Duke NUS Medical School
THE OUTCOME
A collaborative team of students who felt more aligned with the school’s values and culture. And a participation that expanded outside of the original scope to include administration staff and reach 157 participants: 90% of the participants said that they “felt more Duke-NUS” after the artistic experience and 74% felt more creative. And an amazing 6 metre-long mural in the atrium of the main building that will remind all the participants of this collective experience.
THE CHALLENGE
Support medical students in reflecting about their future role in society and increasing their ownership of the Duke NUS new mission statement, while providing an opportunity to self expression and joyful connection.
THE STORY
Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) is the first medical school in Singapore to follow a graduate-entry medicine model, setting up the foundation to provide Singapore and the region top medical research and patient care leaders. The school reframed its mission statement in 2016, to support its innovative programme.
“To educate high-quality individuals from diverse backgrounds to be outstanding clinicians, capable of becoming the future leaders, educators, scholars and scientists in healthcare, who serve the needs of Singapore and beyond with compassion and excellence.”
Duke-NUS decided to foster collaborative and creative conversations to align them with the new mission statement. The aim was to support student life, and give more visibility to the students about themselves and their role : what it means to be a Duke-NUS medical student, and future doctor, for the country and the region.
To meet the challenge, we designed an artistic activation, with the aim:
To provide opportunities for self understanding and vulnerability in a joyful and safe context
To facilitate students’ identity building as leaders, educators, scholars and scientists in today and tomorrow’s healthcare industry
To leverage the collective art work to illustrate that strength comes from number: all the expertise can be found within the group.
We designed the experience in 3 steps:
A stakeholder activation,
An reflection about what it meant to be a Duke NUS medical student, at an individual level first followed by a group level, that we crystalised through symbols and a larger composition
An entire day of social painting, where participants could fluidly hope in and out, to create meaning together.
There were some challenges along the way. The biggest challenge of all was helping these students get over a wall. “I am not an artist” or “I do not know how to draw” were amongst common comments we initially heard. As high performers, it was challenging for some students to risk to not be perfect, and do it anyway. One of our aims was for students to understand and activate a “peer support system”. Even if one student did not feel he or she could do it, the support of the group made it possible for all to participate and surprised themselves. In the same way, doctors in the operating theatre need not have all the knowledge, but could trust their team to fill in. They learnt how their capacity to improvise and adapt as a team, was as important as grades and pure knowledge.
A survey conducted at the end of the final workshop revealed that 90% of the participants “felt more Duke-NUS” after the artistic experience and 74% of the students felt more creative. The online and offline participative mechanism we created increased participation almost tenfold, from 15 to 157 people.
We loved the student pride toward their achievement and also the level of artistry participants managed to reach collectively.
We have been working with successive batches of Duke NUS students for the last 3 years since: conducting mental wellbeing workshops, and programmes to foster creativity and community spirit.