Category Archives: exploration

Top Resources for Post-Election Dialogue Across Divides

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Earlier this week, NCDD hosted a special post-election Confab Call during which over fifty of our members and affiliates had a rich, inspiring, and for some, therapeutic conversation about what kind of work people in the dialogue and deliberation field are doing to address this post-election moment.

XS Purple NCDD logoThe call was part of our ongoing #BridgingOurDivides campaign, during which we’ve been encouraging our members to share about the work happening in our field that’s aimed at fostering bridge building, and to share resources that can build capacity to move forward together despite differences. The Confab Call was its own kind of resource, and if you missed the call, you can hear about all the great projects, insights, and resources that were discussed during it by listening to the recording here or reading over the discussion and links from the call’s chat transcription here. But there are many more resources we want to share with you all today.

As we’ve mentioned before, there are important needs being felt in the wake of the election year’s end that dialogue and deliberation can address: D&D can help us process our feelings and what’s next, it can help promote and maintain civility, it can assist in bridging long-standing divides, and it can facilitate interactions that humanize people or groups who’ve been made into caricatured “others” and out groups. NCDD wanted to know how our field is responding to these needs, so we recently asked our D&D community to share their resources, tools, and projects that could help address post-election issues with us.

We received a wide variety of wonderful resources in response to that call, and in our continued efforts to help the field rise to the needs and opportunities presented in this challenging moment for our country, we’ve created a list of some of the best resources the NCDDers shared. We’ve linked to over two dozen resources below that we hope D&D practitioners will find useful as you engage with your communities over the coming weeks and months.

Please continue to add to this list in the comments section, as we’ll be continuing to archive the best of these and other tools in our Resource Center for future use. For now, take a look through the list below of valuable D&D resources.

Processing Emotions and What Happens Next

Much of what is needed across the country after the election is simply spaces and methods to process our thoughts and feelings about the election season, the outcome, and what they want to see happen next – together. There are tons of great resources in our field for doing that, and here are some of the good ones:

Promoting and Maintaining Civility

With the divisiveness and rancor of the election season’s rhetoric on all sides, a huge part of the need D&D can fill right now is to help build the capacity for civil conversations when we’re disagreeing – whether within families, in the media, or in the legislature. Below are some of the best resources for supporting civility after the election:

Bridging Our Dividesflag-cracked

The election both opened new divides and deepened old ones in our society, and helping individuals and communities bridge those divides need to be a special focus of D&D work today. We encourage you to learn more about how you can facilitate that bridging using the resources below:

Humanizing Groups Seen as “the Other”

One of the most troubling needs after the election, especially in light of the spike in hate crimes over the last month, is the need to develop and implement D&D methods that can help people see the humanity in those who they’ve written off as “other” or “less than” themselves. This need is one that our field urgently needs to develop more robust resources for addressing, but there are some good ones out there, which we’ve listed below:

  • NCDD member organization Not In Our Town has a treasure trove of resources for hosting conversations and taking action to oppose bullying and hate groups. Check out their huge catalogue of videos (most of which come with discussion guides) you can use to start conversations about addressing intolerance. You can also check out their guide on bringing stakeholders together, their Not In Our Schools guides for educators, and their quick start guide
  • NCDD recently launched our new Race, Police, & Reconciliation listserv to support collaboration and exchange among those working in racial dialogue, community-police relations, and truth-telling & reconciliation work – all of which help break down barriers between “us” and “them.” We encourage all involved in such work to join
  • We recommend reading and sharing about AllSides.com, a project that helps reduce the disconnection from other perspectives that the echo-chamber effect of social media fosters by providing comparisons of the same news stories from left-leaning, right-leaning, and center-based sources
  • If you want to get sense of how thick your “bubble” is or help your friends think about theirs, check out this quiz that purports to give a rating of how insulated you are or are not from the experiences of working class people
  • On the creative side, the US Department of Arts & Culture is inviting communities to participate in their annual People’s State of the Union between Jan. 27 – Feb. 5 by hosting story circles that encourage telling real stories of connection, disconnection, and breaking through barriers. Check out the downloadable toolkit for hosts
  • This illustrated video of a webinar on the power of storytelling to humanize “others” has important lessons on listening to people we’ve been taught to hate
  • For some reflection on how we make those we don’t know into “the other,” check out the classic TED talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about “the danger of a single story”

What Other Resources Are Out There?

This list features some incredible resources, but we know it’s just a taste of what’s out there in our field, so we encourage everyone to continue sharing your resources for addressing post-election needs in the comments section below! For now, we encourage you all to keep thinking about how our field can make its broadest impact possible in moving our communities and our nation beyond its deep divides and toward a positive future.

If you want to find even more amazing D&D tools, be sure to visit NCDD’s Resource Center.

Join our Confab on “What’s Next?” Post-Election, 11/29

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As we posted about earlier this week, the Presidential election has brought forth new needs for dialogue and deliberation, as well as renewed importance of the work to bridge divides that our field has been doing for many Confab bubble imageyears. We’ve been appreciating the responses our community have had so far to this post, and we’d like to provide an additional opportunity for us all to discuss this important time in our work.

Join us Tuesday, November 29th at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific for a 90-minute Confab Call to talk together as a community about what’s next after the election. This will be an open call, allowing community members to talk about their bridge building work, or ideas for what they can do post-election. NCDD staff will lead the call, but we won’t have any featured presenters – we want to hear from you!

The need for dialogue and deliberation is stronger than ever, and our network is poised to help our communities and nation come together across divides to tackle our toughest challenges. Join us as we talk about what’s being done now, and what’s possible for us in our work individually and collectively.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

Join Conversation on Public Voice After the Election

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NCDD member organization Public Agenda is hosting a post-election event tomorrow in NYC that we want our members to be aware of. They’ll be convening a breakfast panel including two field-leading NCDD members along with an NYC city councilor to discuss making politics more responsive to public input in light of the election results. You can tweet or email them questions you want to see discussed, or register to attend if you’re in the area. Learn more in the PA blog post below or find the original here.

The State of Public Voice, Post-Election

PublicAgenda-logoMany in the United States have felt for some time that our elected officials don’t put the public’s concerns first. Now, years of diminishing trust in government and a growing divide between elites and the public have culminated in 2016: a growing, rarely productive populism and a divisive election season here in the United States.

While this year has been tumultuous and confusing, it also represents a crossroads. Can we harness the growing populism and cultivate a more meaningful, productive public conversation and a more engaged, informed public?

We’ll be exploring this and other questions during our upcoming policy breakfast, Can the Public Have a Real Voice in American Politics?

The event takes place the morning of November 17th, after the election. We’ll know who our next president will be. But we’ll have a lot more questions to explore.

We hope you can join us for this exciting conversation. We’ll dig into how politics – at the national and local levels -can become more responsive to people’s needs and give them more meaningful and powerful roles in our democracy.

This event will include a networking breakfast, panel discussion, and audience Q&A. More details are below and you can register here.

When:

Thursday, November 17th
8:00 – 10:30 a.m. ET

Where:

Scandinavia House
58 Park Avenue, 2nd Floor, (between 37th and 38th Streets), New York, NY 10016

Who:

Moderator
Geraldine Moriba
Executive Producer Program Development and Vice President Diversity and Inclusion, CNN

Panelists

Carolyne Abdullah
Director of Strengthening Democratic Capacity Team, Everyday Democracy

Brad Lander
Councilmember, New York City Council

Matt Leighninger
Vice President of Public Engagement, Public Agenda

Follow the conversation online using #AMPolicy and following @PublicAgenda.

NCDD Launches Listserv on Race, Police, & Reconciliation

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Link to NCDD listservsThere were many connections made, collaborations started, and projects launched during our NCDD 2016 conference last month in Boston. But there’s one initiative that we want to specifically highlight today and encourage our NCDD members to support.

As NCDD 2016 participants dug into the conference theme of Bridging Our Divides, two important and related divides were clearly feeling urgent for participants – our nation’s racial divides, and the parallel divide between police and the communities they work in. During several conference workshops, conversations in the hallways, and during the plenaries, our NCDD members were also exploring and sharing ideas about the power of truth & reconciliation processes to possibly help our nation address such issues, asking themselves not only what D&D practitioners can do to play a more active role in growing work aimed bridging these fraught divides, but also, what are we already doing?

That’s why NCDD is launching a new email discussion listserv that we hope will serve as a space where we can continue to share and discuss ideas, tools, projects, and resources about race dialogue, community-police dialogue, and truth-telling & reconciliation work. We encourage anyone in our network who works on, studies, or has an interest in race relations, community-police relations in the face of violence, or broader truth-telling and reconciliation processes to join this email list to network and share with others who work in these areas.

Join the Discussion Today

You can subscribe to the Race, Police, & Reconciliation Discussion List by sending a blank email to race-dialogue-subscribe-request@lists.ncdd.org. Then once you’re subscribed, you can send messages to everyone on the list by emailing race-dialogue@lists.ncdd.org.

We know that there many NCDD members – and even more outside of our network – already engaged in ongoing dialogue efforts across historical racial divides and doing the difficult work of trying to help everyday people angry with police to hear and be heard by law enforcement officials. And we at NCDD want to try to harness that collective energy and catalyze even more collaboration among those who are seeking to strengthen that work or move it towards real healing and reconciliation.

We believe that our D&D field has a special role to play in making substantive progress about how we move forward together as a country on these difficult divides, and we invite you to join us on this new discussion listserv to begin figuring out just how we do that.

Learn more about NCDD’s many other discussion and updates listservs at www.ncdd.org/listservs.

How D&D-Journalism Partnerships Hold “Infinite Potential”

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Our media collaborations panel during the NCDD 2016 conference had the whole room buzzing. NCDD member Peggy Holman facilitated a conversation between accomplished journalists and conference participants on how the D&D field can create stronger partnerships with media makers, and we uncovered some very powerful possibilities for D&D-journalism collaborations.
One of the panelists was Chris Faraone of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and he recently penned an article reflecting the conference and those possibilities. In it, he shared advice for how our field can bring them to fruition that we hope our members will take to heart, so we encourage you to read the piece from Chris below or to find the original version here.

Talk Kin: Where Journalism Meets Dialogue and Deliberation

“Where the heck have you all been my whole career?”

I found myself thinking and saying such things repeatedly at the National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, which was held outside of Boston two weeks ago. I only learned about the host group, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), a few months earlier, but by the time its members came to Massachusetts for their biannual gathering I felt like I was meeting long-lost cousins.

Other realms cross over into media as well  –  from research and academia, to public relations, to technology and programming. But while several virtually simpatico professional alliances may lurk out there, the discovery of Dialogue & Deliberation  –  or simply D&D for the initiated  –  was particularly surprising and exciting. Comprised of voices from a wide range of fields, from life coaches and lawmakers to psychologists and social workers, they’re primarily communicators, and are therefore kin to any journo worth a damn.

The theme for NCDD 2016 was “Bridging Our Divide,” a timely guideline amidst so much partisan crossfire and political warfare, but also a reference to how the D&D community is ready to engage new partners and expand. In their welcome letter, NCDD Executive Director Sandy Heierbacher and Program Director Courtney Breese wrote that they hoped attendees would “take a systemic look at why so many initiatives in our field [D&D] are underfunded and under-reported,” and added that their intention for the weekend was to “provide an opportunity to build a new foundation of relationships … and create new momentum.”

Which is where I entered the picture. This year NCDD tapped Journalism That Matters, a nonprofit that convenes conversations (one of which inspired me to start the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism nearly two years ago) to foster collaboration, to help bridge individuals and outlets doing D&D with those involved with journalism.

According to JTM Executive Director Peggy Holman, “the engagement space is where journalists and communities intersect,” and after taking in the conference and participating in the final plenary which examined this topic, I’m happy to report that I believe there’s absolutely infinite potential in a D&D and journalism matrimony. I have no doubt that deliberation is an industry that I will write about, revisit, and consider for years to come; for now, here are my takeaways from the NCDD event neatly parsed into two sections: comments that I heard in last week’s sessions that are relevant to my reportorial experience, and ideas for how these fields can start co-functioning.

ENGAGED MINDS THINK ALIKE

“We need to take this work to a whole new level. There’s a need for media organizations that are tied to the community in a meaningful way.”

This is essentially the whole idea driving our nonprofit journalism model. Whereas many university-based incubators recruit staff from the top J schools and provide content to major outlets, BINJ proudly works with freelancers and even advocates from the communities we cover, and primarily publishes through local, independent, and ethnic news outlets. In short, we’re the kind of grassroots operation that has open arms for interesting collaborations.

“Build on what’s already happening. We need to get people where they already are.”

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This was a major part of the idea behind BINJ, which is not a publication in and of itself but instead boosts and adds to other outlets. As it relates to how we can connect with various non-journalistic organizations, D&D or otherwise, my philosophy has always been to harness as much content from the real world as possible. If more reporters did that, if they actually left their desks, there would be less insultingly trite “think” pieces, and hopefully more articles featuring people who really know something.

“There’s a hunger out there not just to be heard, but to be engaged at a level that we haven’t seen before.”

Even I am getting tired of “engagement” growing into such a buzzword of late  –  it’s what journalists should be doing anyway, all day and all week, I can’t stress that enough. Similarly, D&D people may be miffed to see big media organizations getting credit for the kinds of interactive programs, public dialogues, and forums NCDD members have done for decades.

There’s a positive side to said trend as well though. At least from where I’m thinking. I come from the alternative media tradition where people are entrusted to report on situations in which they are stakeholders: women on feminist movements; people of color on civil rights issues; poor people on poverty; students on education. And so on. This is a point of pride, as well as a model on which budding D&D media makers can build in beginning to publish material.

“Learning relationships.”

This is just a phrase I heard a few times that resonated with me. Considering how bad reporters (including myself on occasion) can be at building with our sources, as opposed to simply prodding them for quotes, we can all use a reminder of how learning should be symbiotic.

“So that we can tell the world our story. So this work can get out in the public.”

This may be even easier than many dialogue specialists realize. Or maybe they realize that there are some awesome opportunities to get the word out about everything they’re doing, but feel as if there’s some kind of technological roadblock. I’ll address this more below, but there are no such impediments. All you need is time or hired guns, and every last critical deliberative note can be disseminated widely via social media and other channels.

LET’S GET IT STARTED

Consider journalists your friends.

Members of the media are potential pals and allies to the D&D world, or at least we should be. Furthermore, both groups can collaborate in certain cases, while in others hacks can demonstrate to NCDD members how to generate media, since opportunities for traditional coverage are dwindling. As some of my esteemed co-panelists at the D&D conference noted, it is increasingly a waste of time for nonprofits, for example, to hassle journalists for favorable ink.

Even if one does land an occasional story in a newspaper of record, that’s still unlikely to amount to more than a quick hit that’s soon forgotten. This may sound somewhat cliche, but in 2016 it’s more important to generate your own media than it is to send out press releases.

Get involved with local and community news organizations.

This goes back to that line I heard at NCDD: Build on what’s already happening. There may be existing opportunities in your area to get in the same room with reporters, or at least to get thinking like them  –  from Mediabistro meetups, to civic engagement events like those being held by more and more media outfits, from nonprofits to commercial ones. BINJ, for example, has a Community Advisory Board with representatives from various nonprofits and advocacy groups; though we don’t always agree with members, we have spurred instructive dialogue with all of them.

If none of the community, nonprofit, local, or alternative outlets in your area have a comparable mechanism for input, maybe D&D experts can help get something started.

Start chronicling your D&D work.

A lot of people in the D&D world are already doing reporting in some way  –  they’re just not always publishing the fruits of their hard work, or organizing assets in a fashion fit for mass consumption. Think of the possibilities though  –  from starting a podcast or a cable access show, to taping and transcribing certain dialogues to create oral histories.

The production of compelling content on a regular basis, even in micro-installments on social media, will require somebody with press savvy or even real newsroom experience to curate and edit. But as I noted on my panel at the NCDD conference, no matter who is making the media, it’s important that they stop thinking of the task as public relations, and start considering themselves storytellers.

You can find the original version of this piece by Chris Faraone of BINJ on Medium at www.medium.com/binj-reports/talk-kin-686f7f501427#.rlsrt0357.

Call for D&D Showcase Presenters at NCDD 2016

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NCDD is excited to announce that we’ll once again be holding our popular “D&D Showcase” during the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and we are looking for presenters!

yardsign_300pxThe D&D Showcase is a lively cocktail networking event that provides an opportunity for select individuals and organizations in our field to share some of the leading ideas, tools, projects, and initiatives in dialogue & deliberation with conference participants all in one space. It’s a fun way for conference-goers to meet some of the movers-and-shakers in D&D and hear about the projects, programs, and tools that are making waves in our work.

How the Showcase will work

Showcase presenters display simple “posters” about their work, tools, or projects and bring handouts and business cards to share with participants who are interested in learning more or following up. Showcase presenters will be ready to succinctly express what’s important for conference participants to know about their resource, method, research, program, etc. and to elaborate and answer any questions people may have.

During the 90-minute Showcase event, conference participants will stroll around the ballroom, chatting with presenters, and checking out their displays and picking up Showcase2014-2handouts. We’ll also have finger foods and beverages available as well as a cash bar, adding to the social atmosphere of the session.

The Showcase is a great chance to strike up conversations with leaders in the field and other conference participants who are strolling around the room, perusing the “wares.”

You can get a good sense of what the Showcase is like by watching this slideshow from our 2012 conference in Seattle.

You can also see Janette Hartz-Karp and Brian Sullivan presenting at the 2008 Showcase event here (back when we called it the “D&D Marketplace”), and check out the video of Noam Shore, Lucas Cioffi, and Wayne Burke presenting their online tools here.

Showcase2014-1Becoming a Showcase Presenter

The conference planning team is hard at work planning NCDD 2016, and one of our upcoming steps includes selecting people and organizations who are passionate about sharing tools and programs we know will interest our attendees as presenters during the Showcase. If you are interested in having your tool, project, idea, or work being featured in the Showcase, please email our conference manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org and include: what it is you would like to showcase, a brief description of it, any links to where more information can be found, and any questions you have.

Please note that these slots are very competitive, and we will be favoring Showcase presentations that relate to the conference theme, Bridging Our Divides. So if your work, project, or tool focuses on helping people work across persistent divisions in our society, we definitely want to hear from you!

If you are selected as a D&D Showcase presenter, you’ll be expected to:

  • Register for NCDD 2016 and attend the conference.
  • Prepare a quick spiel or “elevator speech” about your Showcase topic that will get people interested in learning more. Practice it until it comes out naturally. We suggest you prepare several introductions of different lengths (30 seconds, 1 minute, etc.) so you can adjust quickly to different circumstances during the Showcase.
  • Showcase2014-4Prepare a simple, visually interesting poster and bring it with you to the conference.
  • Bring handouts about your program, method, online tool, publication, etc. that include further details.
  • Have any laptop-dependent pieces of your Showcase presentation finished, functional, and ready to share (you’ll need to bring your own computer).
  • Show up for the Showcase session about 20 minutes early so we have time to make sure everyone is set up and has everything they need.

You can find more information and advice for Showcase presenters on our Conference FAQ page here.

We are looking forward to having another informative and inspirational D&D Showcase this year, so we hope you’ll consider applying to be a presenter or urging your colleagues who are doing ground-breaking and critical work in the field to do so. We can’t wait to see all of the cutting-edge projects showcased in October!

NCDD is the New Steward for Conversation Café! – Now What?

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In case you haven’t heard, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has become the new steward of Conversation Café (CC). Andy has revamped the CC website, which you can check out at www.conversationcafe.org, and we are in the process of reconnecting with the CC network and figuring out how we can best support and grow this important community.

NCDD’s Sandy Heierbacher and Keiva Hummel will be spearheading this effort, so feel free to contact either of us if you have questions or want to help out!

We’ve created a new one-way announcement list to share news about Conversation Café happenings once in a while (no more than monthly). We encourage all of you to subscribe to that list if you have some interest in CC’s by sending a blank email to conversation-cafe-subscribe-request@lists.ncdd.org.

If you’re a Conversation Cafe host or promoter (or want to be) also consider joining the new Cafe-Community listserv – a discussion list we’ve modeled after the NCDD Discussion list to encourage CC leaders to network, share information, and discuss key issues facing the CC community. To join that list, send a blank email to cafe-community-subscribe-request@lists.ncdd.org.

Why does NCDD feels it’s important to support Conversation Café?

Back in March 2014, we had an amazing conversation with the NCDD community on the blog here about whether we should play this role, and though there were many eloquent arguments both for and against NCDD becoming the new stewards for the CC method, we decided in the end that it was important to help this elegantly simple approach survive and thrive – and we hope you can support our decision!

We think Conversation Café is a wonderful model for dialogue that can and should be widely adopted across the U.S. and the globe. Our vision for Conversation Café, in part, is that it be used to help communities address national and local crises that call for immediate dialogue.

We think CCs are nimble, accessible, and elegantly simple enough to be used very quickly by many people, and NCDD is particularly well equipped to help new CC groups use other forms of dialogue and deliberation when the time is right.

We also just want to see more people, in more places, engaging regularly in conversations that matter, and feel that Conversation Café is uniquely suited to helping make this happen.

In addition to subscribing to the announcement list or discussion list mentioned above, we strongly encourage any of you who have hosted CCs to take a minute and complete the quick form at www.conversationcafe.org/main-survey to tell us a little about your work and interests. Our main interest right now is to learn about what is currently (and has been) going on in the Conversation Café community, and this would help us a great deal!

New Initiative Experiments with Collective Healing Processes

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In the lead up to our NCDD 2016 conference, we continue to lift up stories of people who are Bridging Our Divides. So we wanted to share the piece below written by NCDD member Beth Tener of New Directions Collaborative about a great collective healing initiative she’s involved in that seeks to experiment with processes that will help large groups heal from old wounds that maintain separation. We encourage you to read her piece below or find the original here.

Collective Healing: Shifting Historical Patterns that Divide Us

We live in times of extreme partisanship, increasing divisions between the rich and poor, the working class and upper class, experiences of people of color vs. whites, and disconnects of people from nature. As the US Presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK illustrate, our current political process tends to amplify divisions and generate more discord rather than greater understanding, stronger connections, and wise solutions balancing multiple needs.

When people are divided and disconnected, it is not surprising that there is a lack of empathy, curiosity, and care for the experiences and well being of people different than us. It can be easy to label people and disdain their views versus seeing them as individuals whose stories and struggles I understand and have talked to them about.

Finding new ways

It is time to find ways we can work together that overcome these patterns of division and separation. This is already happening in many places, perhaps at the edges and not that visible yet, but real nonetheless. Global communities of practice are inventing and evolving these processes (e.g., circle process, participatory processes, participatory budgeting, networks for system change.) While these experiments may seem at the edges when all the attention is focused on the mainstream political debate, they can hold seeds of a better way.

Over the last two years, I have been part of a rich dialogue with people who are exploring ways to bring people together that can help heal these long-standing harmful patterns. This group includes facilitators and others working with the Art of Hosting from Europe and the US. A gathering called Collective Healing will take place in Florida in August to experiment with bringing together various methods in a prototype, which we will learn and share more widely. We have focused on several key themes of what is needed:

  • Engaging across difference and connecting to “we” not just “me” – Getting beyond our narrow self interest to see ourselves as an inherent part of a larger group, community, society, and earth – and acting from that awareness – is not emphasized or easy to do. How can we facilitate groups in ways that generate a sense of belonging? How can we create group experiences that help us see those who are different not through the lens of a label but as full human beings with many stories, with complex emotions, and unique gifts and aspirations?
  • Reweaving the fragments of community with positive collective experiences – The pressures and pace of work these days means many are chronically rushed, super-busy, addicted, and distracted. Fulfilling human experiences of connection, belonging, friendship, creativity, meaningful work, and the opportunity to work with others on a bigger cause are sorely lacking. Changing these patterns starts with creating spaces for meaningful conversation about things that matter. Conversation is the “connective tissue” that can reconnect the fragmented parts.
  • Trauma: the overlooked pattern affecting everything – Yet, even with these promising ways to gather people and generate ideas of how we can make things better, this is not enough. Any initiative to look forward and make positive change takes place in a community or system that has a long history, which we often overlook. The fragmented relationships, broken bonds of community, and lack of trust did not arise out of nowhere. There is a story there. Events of the past created harms and burdens that are often unacknowledged. These unhealed traumas can still be affecting the situation and the people involved… and blocking the potential to shift to a healthier pattern/outcome. Promising processes are emerging to help communities or societies explore and work with history in ways that can enable healing, for example systemic constellation, restorative justice, and truth and reconciliation commissions.
  • Community and connection: healing together – One of the key ways to heal trauma is the experience of being truly heard and seen. When trauma is pushed under the rug, mental and emotional turmoil arises. Bessel van der Kolk writes “Denial of the consequences of trauma can wreak havoc with the social fabric of society.” What can we do to create a strong fabric of community while coming together and acknowledging the traumas? How can we generate a shared understanding and commitment to change so we do not repeat these harmful patterns?
  • Accessing overlooked human capacities – In much of the work world, there are unwritten rules of being professional and successful: use your intellect and leave your emotions at the door. We can access a broader range of human capacities, such as empathy and compassion, to understand the experiences and motivations of all those within a community and society. We are only beginning to explore how mindfulness and presence can help us understand past and present dynamics and make decisions. And there is more potential to explore weaving in arts, music, movement, and creative expression, which also tend to be left at the door. What could be possible in our collective work if we did not expect people to split off their emotional, intuitive, and creative sides to “be professional?” How might we make decisions if we access the power of “collective presence?”

There is a hunger for this…

In my work with non-profits, communities, businesses, governments, and foundations in social and environmental change, I have seen that: These practices work. There is a hunger for real conversation, for connecting to our larger community to achieve greater results together, and for contributing to making the world a better place.

It starts with an invitation…

We graciously invite you to join us for this first gathering in Florida, focused on how we can create spaces for collective healing: www.collectivehealing.net.

We anticipate this is just the beginning, with intention to host other gatherings in Europe and other parts of the US. At bottom of this page is place to sign onto mailing list for future events: www.collectivehealing.net/about.

And we welcome your financial support for this new initiative, in any amount, through our crowdfunding web site: www.indiegogo.com/projects/creating-collective-healing-spaces.

You can find the original version of this New Directions Collaborative blog post at www.ndcollaborative.com/collective-healing.

Featured D&D Story: Facilitating Dialogue Circles at the Mixed Remixed Festival

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Today we’re pleased to be featuring another example of dialogue and deliberation in action. This mini case study was submitted by Angelo John Lewis of Dialogue Circles via NCDD’s Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add your dialogue story today!

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project:

Facilitating Dialogue Circles at the Mixed Remixed Festival

Description

Last June 10 and 11, I and four other facilitators participated in the annual Mixed Remixed Festival at the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles. The festival bills itself as “the nation’s premiere cultural arts festival celebrating stories of the Mixed experience, multiracial and multicultural families and individuals through films, books, and performance.”

I and my colleagues saw our role as giving the festival participants and opportunity to share their stories in an audience of people whose experience was similar to their own. We did this by facilitating two dialogue circles and an additional workshop which gave participants an opportunity to write about and share their stories.

We were overwhelmed by the response! All told, about 125 people participated in our sessions and many said it was the first time they’d had an opportunity to reflect and freely share their experience of being biracial, bicultural, or other. The audience included people of mixed race heritage and people who were children or parents of mixed race kids. At the conclusion of our sessions, we challenged participants to declare the next step in their journey or what they planned to do differently after participating in the workshop. Some said they planned to organize similar discussions in their communities, while others said they’d now more freely proclaim their identity as “mixed” as opposed to a member of one cultural group; still others vowed to write about their experience.

Because the groups were so large, everyone didn’t get an opportunity to share their stories. We are now talking to the conference organizers to remedy this by offering teleconference dialogue sessions.

At the end of the day, our conference participation renewed our belief in the power of dialogue and our particular approach, which integrates personal storytelling.

Joining me were Roxanne Kymaani, Zachary Gabriel Green, Cindy Franklin, and S.Y. Bowman.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

Bohm Dialogue

What was your role in the project?

Primary facilitator

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Interfaith conflict
  • Race and racism
  • Economic issues
  • Aging / elder issues
  • Youth issues

Lessons Learned

We learned several lessons:

  • The power of storytelling for breaking down barriers between people.  The focus on personal storytelling is a unique feature of the dialogue circle method and was particularly appropriate for this group.
  • Many people of mixed race heritage have insufficient opportunities to share their stories with others. They often feel that others expect them to choose ethnic or cultural sides despite their dual heritage and don’t truly feel comfortable when questions of identity are raised.
  • The importance of using large group dynamics in a setting when groups are particularly large. So while 15 or 20 participants would have been ideal, these particular groups were much larger. Therefore, we asked participants to raise their hands when they heard a speaker share something that mirrored their experience. This allowed for greater participation among our two groups, one of which was about 40 people and the other consisted of about 65.

Where to learn more about the project:

www.dialogue-circles.com

CII Seeks Support to Develop New “Wise Democracy” Tool

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Long time NCDD members John Spady recently sent us news of a project being undertaken by another NCDD member, Tom Atlee, and his Co-Intelligence Institute that we wanted to share here. Tom and the CII are developing a new tool for supporting “wiser democracy,” and are seeking support to obtain a matching grant for the work. We encourage you to read John’s letter about the project below or learn more about the project and how to support here.

Fundraiser request from the Co-intelligence Institute with Tom Atlee

The board of the Co-intelligence Institute (CII) has initiated a fund raiser to support the emergence of “wiser democracy” – Tom Atlee and Martin Rausch have developed a pattern language card desk design (similar in design to the Group Works deck created in 2011) to impart a sense of what is possible and promote wiser archetypes of design, and they are calling on the D&D community for support in funding the project.

The CII fundraiser is at this secure link: https://bit.ly/CII-fundraiser2016. Here’s a bit more explanation from the fundraiser page:

Tom Atlee and Martin Rausch have been working on a Wise Democracy Group Pattern Language deck, that builds on the insights of Tom’s previous books, The Tao of Democracy and Empowering Public Wisdom. In some ways, this new pattern language is analogous to the Group Pattern Language deck, only its focus is on democracy as a whole, instead of on groups. Your contribution will allow us to complete this project, which is already half-way there! We still need to edit the cards, complete the designs, and invest in our first print run.

It’s also a great time to contribute, since your money will be doubled through an anonymous challenge grant, if we reach our goal by August 31st! Any funds over the amount we are requesting here, will be used for other co-intelligence projects, such as the completion of a nearly-finished book on the need for a participatory approach to sustainability.

This challenge grant from a generous and anonymous donor has been made and the challenge can only be met if CII first raises $10,000. Please take a moment to visit the link and review the challenge.

In the words of Walt Whitman: “I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.”

While wise democracy has not yet been enacted on a large scale,  a number of successful experiments show what is possible. The cards that have been drafted distill patterns of “good design” – aspects we need to consider when creating  a wiser democracy. These are not a “set of rules” but instead support reflection, integration, and implementation.

Thank you for you interest in this project from the Co-intelligence Institute!

John Spady
CII Board Member
and Founder of the National Dialogue Network