AMPLIFYING THE POWER OF DEEPER HUMAN CONNECTION.

How do we help more people enjoy deeper, more fulfilling relationships with their loved ones?

The Skin Deep has been digging into this question since 2014.

Now in the 12th year of this journey, our best answer has distilled down into something profoundly simple:

Within this simplicity lies much complexity. So what exactly do we do? Let’s break it down. 

Creating the space for conversations 

Human relationships are built brick by brick, conversation by conversation.

No doubt you’ve experienced this before. You have ‘one-of-those’ important conversations with a loved one or co-workers. What follows? Deep relief, catharsis, fluttery love or a deep calming trust. Something shifts and deepens in your relationship with them. 

So, how did you get there? What makes those conversations so impactful?

It begins with the space created. All conversations require physical and emotional space. They could be unplanned and unintentional, like bumping into someone on the street. They can be embedded into everyday life, like chatting to your partner while driving somewhere in the car together.

By creating intentional space for deeper conversation we give ourselves the opportunity to take our connection to new places. 

This is why we design experiences, and why we make games.

Playing a game together opens up a particular type of space. A game is a shared experience that is disarming, fun and encourages openness and experimentation. We design our card games for players to explore their a relationship and having extraordinary conversations. Opening up a pack of cards creates a fertile container to safely open new depths in a relationship.

Asking powerful questions

Asking questions that will deepen our connection to others isn’t a skill that we are often taught in life. Our relationships don’t come with instruction sheets and normally we don’t go out and consciously ‘practice conversations’ in day to day life. 

How we learn to ask questions and have conversations is limited by what has been modelled to us through our friends, family and community. 

This challenge creates the opportunity that underpins all our work.

If we don't have the opportunity or ability to ask questions to explore our relationships, then we limit our feeling of connection to other people. We stifle the potential fulfilment we can experience from the relationships in our lives. 

This is why The Skin Deep believes so deeply in the power of questions. Over 12 years, creating thousands of questions for all kinds of relationships, we've learned what works and what doesn’t. We’ve learned how to design questions that work like keys to unlock deeper connection between people.

Put simply, 

Our questions are tools, used by people all over the world, to have more courageous conversations and experience deeper connection and more fulfilment in their relationships. 

Exploring the space between us

Our signature project {THE AND} began as a series of live experiences and an Emmy-award winning documentary in 2014. 

"We call it {THE AND} because it is about the space between people. A relationship is not between you or I, it’s between you and I. It is the and that connects us." ~Topaz Adizes, Founder of The Skin Deep.

Over 12 years {THE AND} has grown to encompass live events, physical conversation card games and digital toolkits. Thousands of people have participated in this ongoing documentary series all over the world, bravely sharing moments of their relationships with the world.

Vulnerability

Laughter.

Friendship.

Love. 

We’ve even had people come back, again and again documenting growth and change in their relationships over many years.

The full library of {THE AND} videos (on our YouTube channel) has grown into a powerful repository of authentic human moments, from all kinds of relationships, from all over the world.

It is an archive of human emotion and relational experience of thousands of people, that we can all draw from to enrich our own relationships. 

Now 12 years in, millions of people continue to watch our content and experience playing the card games with the most important people in their lives. 

Why does it continue to work so well?

I think it’s simple. 

It’s about our shared humanity.

Unfortunately moments of authentic humanity are in short supply in our social feeds, and increasingly uncommon in many of our relationships and day to day interactions. 

So, when we see others experiencing something genuine, we resonate, we empathize and we then consider what is possible in our own lives and in our own relationships.

Our platform is your opportunity.

Since 2014, The Skin Deep has been building and activating this platform to produce these moments of authentic humanity.

The opportunity we have now is to amplify this work with others. We are looking to share this platform with brands, organizations and communities who are also in -the work- of celebrating human relationships and creating a more empathetic, connected world.

There are countless ways in which we can collaborate on impactful projects. From brand and social campaigns, live experiences, supporting the launch of new products, films, albums or media projects, to limited edition collaborative products.

If this resonates with you I would love to explore how we can work together to boost the signal of what it means to be fiercely, genuinely, authentically human.

Ants Cabraal.
Director of Growth at The Skin Deep