Community Structures (with Taylor and Beyoncé)

What you can learn from the community experience of the two most successful tours of all time.

Belonging follows a structure whether we intentionally put it in place or not. Groups of people that come together and feel like they belong are most likely feeling connection at 3 levels: big group, small group, and 1:1.

By working on community strategy within different contexts — large organizations, political campaigns, IRL Meetup groups — I’ve realized that communities where people feel a deep sense of belonging have the same core structure.

Once you know the structure, you see it everywhere, which means you can use it to find inspiration in unexpected places.

Whenever I see any collective experience that people are raving about, I start to think about how the structure applies. When people are having a transcendent experience of belonging, it’s usually because the experience hits those 3 levels.

Both Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour have been widely described as transcendent by those who attended.

Here are the 3 levels of community explained via Taylor and Beyoncé’s tours. Both of these tours are full of inspiration if you’re building community.

Big group

Big group is about inspiring awe, celebration, and reinforcing collective purpose and values. In communities, these are the experiences that bring everyone together around their common purpose or identity.

Singing together has been shown to impact neuro-chemicals in the brain that give us feelings of connection. That feeling of being fully in the moment of something bigger than ourselves has been compared to a religious experience by a lot of the attendees of both of Taylor Swift’s and Beyoncé’s tours. What’s important is that the feeling does not come from worshiping the person on stage. It comes from sharing an experience with a sea of other humans. The performer makes the invitation, sets the tone, creates the experience, and is a filter for who is in the room. But the collective experience is not actually about them.

Taylor and Beyoncé, as hosts, helped by setting norms that further connected the experience. There were inside jokes, dress codes and insider rules that made people feel they were a part of something. For the Eras Tour that included dressing like your favorite Era, insider chants, dances and claps at specific moments, and writing 13 on your hand. At the Renaissance tour, Beyoncé’s birthday request about dressing in silver wasn’t just about matching, it echoed the tour’s values of connection and joy: “We’ll surround ourselves in a shimmering human disco ball each night. Everybody mirroring each other’s joy.”

So how can we approach the Big Group experience in communities and gatherings of our own? Here are some prompts to consider:

• How could we bring awe, celebration, purpose and values into events and experiences when we’re all present at the same time?

• How can we build in more opportunities to sing together?

• How can we incorporate physical/digital mementos to take away from gatherings so that the experience lives on beyond its container?

Small Group

Small group experiences are about affinity, comfort and identity. In communities, these are the experiences that allow people to go deeper with fewer people who share a specific identity or goal. It’s in small groups that we are able to be seen. They’re key to helping members of a community feel a sense of shared identity.

The Beyoncé concerts in the NY area happened at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, an hour or so from NYC. Many groups took the opportunity to start the experience as soon as they left home. Friends who may or may not have been able to get tickets all together rented limos to ride to the concert together, admire each other’s outfits and pre-game. For those who weren’t going with a big group of friends, a few companies offered party bus services that left from NYC and included champagne and choreography lessons. This is a perfect small group experience that helped people gather and get to know a few new people in a safe space of other excited fans.

At the Eras Tour, because tickets were so expensive and hard to get, many people showed up alone. Many reported getting to know others in their row and/or section, forming a temporary small group based on proximity.

Swifties also took the opportunity to organize meetups with other strangers before the concert. These were often organized as sub-groups of fans based on internet communities they belong to (Gaylor being one). These seem to be continuing for the premiere of the upcoming Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie.

As you consider small groups for your own community, consider these prompts:

• How can we use small groups to build anticipation for a big group experience?

• How can small groups allow members to deepen existing relationships and form new ones within a safe space?

• How is the group already sub-dividing itself and how can we further support this?

1:1

One-on-one experiences are about friendship and safety. In gatherings and communities, it’s not the host’s responsibility to make all the introductions and kick off every relationship. It is our responsibility to create an environment that supports sparks and then gives people a way to cultivate those sparks.

A concert experience is full of opportunities to form and deepen 1:1 connections.

Having a magical experience with someone you have a relationship with is a way to deepen and strengthen that relationship. At the Renaissance Tour, there were many stories of this happening between parents and children, cousins, childhood best friends, and internet friends. Beyoncé’s music has connected people to each other for a long time, and the concert was an opportunity to celebrate and deepen those connections.

At the Eras Tour, there emerged an incredible 1:1 experience… friendship bracelets! Many attendees made bracelets and exchanged them with strangers at the concert. From what I understand, this wasn’t an intentional part of the experience design for the tour, it was something fans started doing, inspired by a line in a song. My sister, who attended the concert in LA, said meeting new people by exchanging bracelets before the concert was her favorite part of the entire experience.

Exchanging bracelets is an example of a ritual that is perfect for sparking conversation and connection. And it’s something that fans will continue to do at movie theaters, when going to see the film version of the tour.

As you consider how to design a gathering or community to spark and deepen 1:1 experiences, consider this:

• What is the most comfortable environment in which to make a new friend and how can we design for that?

• What is a silly ritual we can use to encourage new people to talk to each other? (bracelets, name tags, prompts, costumes, etc).

• How can we build an environment that normalizes long-term relationship building by giving a path for friendships to form beyond the first spark?

I hope that this structure is helpful as you brainstorm your gatherings and communities. Here are some takeaways to consider:

• Every communal experience that feels whole, has elements of these 3 levels of experience: Big Group, Small Group and 1:1.

• If we approached big experiences like global tours from the lens of belonging, we could make them feel even better for more people. They can be catalysts for addressing loneliness and bringing wellbeing to large groups of people.

• Even if you’re not Beyoncé, you can examine how you feel in these experiences and use that to inspire the events, communities and gatherings you host. ♥️

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