Convenings

Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Seattle, May 3–5, 2002

Andrea Assaf
2002
Topic Session: Internal Capacity / External Perceptions
Arts and cultural institutions need to assess and often realign internal philosophies and structures to support and sustain effective arts-based civic dialogue work. In addition, cultural organizations challenge perceptions and raise new expectations with audiences, the public, civic leaders, the media, and stakeholders in the issue when they enter the civic arena.  In a modified “open space” format, participants had a chance to examine specific internal and external issues facing cultural organizations in the course of doing arts-based civic dialogue work.

Group 1:  Institutional Norms & Staffing, Roles, and Structure (Schaffer)
Participants:  Jay Brause, Michael Warr, Joanna Lindenbaum, Lisa James, Selma Jackson, David Witmer, Alex Marmion-Roosa.  Selma and David read report-outs.*

On restating the question, we asked:  How is arts-based civic dialogue work advanced or impeded by institutionalized attitudes, behaviors, and operating procedures or practices?  How do you begin and end a dialogue within your institution?  We also need dialogues within the institution.

Key challenges discussed were:

  • Internal conflicts and not realizing the tensions that exist.  Identifying points of tension. 
  • Getting buy-in or dealing with those who don’t buy in.  Assumption that our organizations and cultures support the project unquestionably. The belief that our culture supports the process when in actuality it only half-heartedly supports it, and you only get partial buy-in at the start of process. 
  • Our main topics of conversation were:  How do you get involvement?  How do you step back from too much involvement?  How do you let go?  (Especially for those who begin a project and have a strong personal connection to it.)
    We agreed on a process of suspending judgment and allowing questions to be raised.  We need intergenerational meetings during which all voices can be heard.  We recognize the need for management, but we must remain open to all voices.

We need internal dialogue that begins early so that you get everyone’s issues on the table and can begin working together and not making any assumptions about doing good work and having everyone behind you. 

Everyone admits that there will be tensions involved in the process and that there are external stakeholders who will be affected by the process and who will affect the process.  You need to identify external stakeholders up front and elicit their views so you know what their take will be.

There is a need to improve internal communication.  We can’t assume that just because we’ve agreed on something, everyone understands it.  We have to do a better job of describing the process to get the full support of the organization. 

Where did the conversation get juicy?  Identifying where the tension is between dialogue processes and outcomes.  The fact that they sometimes work against each other.  The dialogue process is often less defined than the planning process and usually less predictable than the plans allow you to anticipate.  Your outcomes are apt to be entirely different than you might expect.  Dialogue will take you to places that you won’t anticipate. 

There needs to be the repetition and reinforcement of the mission so that everyone is on the same page. 

Not much that we didn't agree on; passionate that we need to begin with ourselves.

Lessons learned:  begin dialogues early on; identify where the points of tension are or are going to be; the process should be agreed upon.

Lingering questions:  If you’re too involved, how do you disassociate yourself from the process?  What’s the process for the communication you need to get involvement and backing in involving yourself in the project? 

Group 2:  Mission/Philosophy
Sue Wood read responses.

We discovered that we divided into two camps: those of us for whom civic engagement and dialogue were intrinsic parts of our missions and those of us for whom it was something we had taken on as a result of ADI involvement. 

Three questions:

  • What is the point of engagement with the civic realm?  What is the nature of that engagement (formal vs. spontaneous)?  Since art naturally leads to dialogue, is it really necessary to impose formal structures?
  • Is ADI a methodology, a set of methodologies?  Is it being imposed on us?  Who is imposing what on whom?  Isn’t there really a plurality of methodologies?  Shouldn’t the organization find an organic, sustainable methodology around this work?  (Acknowledge the multiple methodologies for ABCD.) 
  • Is the tension between the organization presenting art (the challenging nature of art) and creating safe spaces for dialogue “bridgeable"? (Is this the source of the exhaustion that so many express?)

Group 3:  Civic Dialogue Capacity & External Expertise (Palaréa)
Participants:  Bill Bulick, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Heather Andersen, Valerie Cassel, Claudia Bach, Ann McBroom

Participant’s Questions:

Heather: I am dismayed that the higher up you go (the higher the leadership role), the less willing the civic leaders are to engage in civic dialogue—the mayor, etc.  How do we increase the capacity for citizens to engage in civic dialogue (since those higher up don’t want to engage them)?  Also, how can we increase the capacity of the civic leaders in real civic dialogue?

Valerie:  When more dominant community groups go into other areas to extend themselves toward dialogue, suddenly they are the ones that establish the ground rules for dialogue, which plays into an agenda that is their design.  The people that they engage have no resources once the group leaves.  How do we give them tools and increase their capacity?  How do you break down the hierarchy here so that everyone is engaged equally, rather than the group coming in with their own agenda?

Ann:  As one of those people who parachutes into a neighborhood not my own, what is my role in shaping the project and assisting the key players?  How do I connect more fully with the people and the project?

Claudia:  How important is it to have a shared institutional understanding of civic dialogue to build a strong project?  How much do institutional norms pull things back into a comfort zone rather than building the project? 

Bill:  How can the learning and practice of civic dialogue be applied to community cultural planning and other situations?

Kinshasha:  Is this civic dialogue model replicable?  What happens when civic dialogue doesn’t work?  What happens if civic dialogue increases discord? 

Leadership

  • The leadership issue—hierarchy and power.  How to deal with the lack of willingness of the civic leadership to engage in civic dialogue.  Institutional leadership.  Community based vs. civic leadership—disconnect
  • The facilitator is instrumental in leadership.  It won’t happen organically.  Someone needs to bring people together.  Getting people in the same room with a credible facilitator is important in itself sometimes.  When both sides value and respect the mediator, it brings people back to the table. 
  • Who becomes a leader?  If the artists becomes the agents for dialogue, are they just part of the process, just a tool, or are they also at the table in a place of leadership?  Art gets co-opted to push beyond the artist’s intent. 
  • Artists can be civic leaders.  It depends on the artist and the community, the legitimacy of the artist.

Engaging Stakeholders

  • How do you create value to bring people into the process?
  • A facilitator who can speak many languages is important—need someone who can speak to all of the different communities equally well.  Flexible.  Nimble.  Look for these characteristics.  Facilitator as translator to multiple stakeholders. 
  • How the process is framed, how the buy-in/agreement to the process is arrived at is important.
  • Design the process and ground rules in order to create a safe place for dialogue, to honor the roles of multiple stakeholders
  • Gain agreement to the process. Establish agreements to empower multiple stakeholders. 
  • Engage people to believe that the outcome of the process has significance for them, that there is a benefit for them. 

Dialogue for Dialogue’s Sake

  • In the Understanding Neighbors project, there is no outcome that the project is working toward.  It’s only a dialogue.  So how do I use strategies to empower stakeholders if there is nothing pressing that they are working toward?
  • We have to keep in mind that a lot of these projects are designed only to have dialogue and not to come to action.

Catalyzing Dialogue

  • What is the catalyst that brings people to the table?  What catalyzes leadership?  What about the credibility of the catalyst organization or a set of partners?
  • Visibility—sometimes gaining media attention can be valuable.  Won’t work in all cases; the timing of the visibility is important too. 
  • Events as catalysts (ex. in NY, the catalyst is 9/11).  Capturing the moment—a lot of these projects happened because it was the right time.
  • A catalyst has not been present in all of the projects.  Some of the organizations had to create it.
  • The art as the catalyst.
  • Civic dialogue as the catalyst.  People can be motivated to work toward democracy—it’s sort of like wrapping yourself in the flag.  Who’s going to argue against democracy?

Sustaining Dialogue

  • Certain issues are capable of sustaining dialogue and others aren’t.  Need to assess the viability of the topic. (Sometimes it’s about what’s happening externally, and sometimes it’s internal.   The relevancy goes from a micro to macro level.)
  • How do you sustain the civic dialogue and avoid keeping things the same?  Need to keep the process from closing back in on itself.
  • How does leadership continually challenge the process and keep the discussion open to new ideas?   Art also keeps challenging the discussion. 
  • You have to have a healthy tension, nurturing but challenging space. 
  • Civic dialogue’s use in other processes—how do you use it to make decisions in a community?  How does it become institutionalized in a community and sustain the practice?

Discussion:  Polarization and Discord

Heather:  When you don’t have urgency, but you have two polarized groups (ex. Understanding Neighbors project)—If you have a leader in each camp that can influence the rest of their group to come to the table...

Ann:  My observation is that there is no value for them to do that.  It’s more valuable for them to stay in the poles. 

Heather:  Can you create a value for them?  Identify bridge builders and build their capacity?

Claudia:  Finding common ground and common motivation.

Kinshasha:  What are some of the answers to discord?  In a civic dialogue, who gets to speak?  How do you make sure that multiple voices are heard and the voices of discord are not the only voices heard?  You need to find ways to build capacity for communities to accept discord.  Civic dialogue is not a panacea.  It’s about the long term, and sometimes things get worse before they get better.

Ann:  How do you make it valuable for the richness of the discord to be heard in the extreme?

Heather:  It’s about listening though, not about who can shout louder.

Kinshasha:  Accept the fact that some things aren’t solvable.  The dialogue we start may continue without our control.

Heather: .... And may transform into debate and other forms of talk.

Valerie:  Civic dialogue is not always civil

Ann:  I disagree.  I think dialogue is civil.

Kinshasha:  There may be some value in unintended witnesses hearing the debate (ex. Brooklyn meeting in the NY cultural plan)

Ann:  You want to have some sort of mechanism in place to continue the dialogue after you’ve left.

Bill: ...A diagnostic tool and a response...

Ann:  ...And a way to deal with the aftermath of the dialogue.

Report-out: ( Multiple readers.)

Themes:

  • External expertise—when should an organization seek and use it?
  • Leadership
  • Process
  • Sustainability
  • Discord and dialogue

Patterns of hierarchy and power that need to be addressed when doing arts-based civic dialogue. 

Safe spaces need to be multilingual and have flexible facilitator(s).  Project leaders need to design the process ahead of time to engage leadership with a vested interest in a goal that could result from the process.  Catalytic forces include timing, the relevance of the issue itself, and leadership within community.  Project leaders need to create or capture catalytic moments.  It is important to mediate the "macro" of the community and the "micro" of the organization. 

So much effort put into creating safe spaces.  There are, however, inherent boundaries to it.  We need to try to create sustainable processes that place value in it. 

Is the artwork a tool?  Are the artists the civic leaders?  How do they participate, what are their roles?  Timeliness of the artwork and dialogue is key.  It can create value in dialogue, a common reason for people to get to the table.  It helps establish motivation.

The credible outsider – one way to look at some of the situations where people came together over great discord.

The hook of terminology like democracy and civil and its implications.  Why do (or don't) people think it is worth their time and energy? 

Discord:  it happens.  We hope that we’ll have some strategies to navigate through it; but also just accepting that it’s going to happen can be both troublesome and positive.  Discord can catalyze decision-making.

Is dialogue inherently civil?  What’s the shared set of beliefs about what is “civil” speaking and listening?  How do you wind up with a process that works throughout?  How do you negotiate disagreements about this?  The process doesn’t end even if it’s contentious.  It creates a new process. 

We may start a dialogue that may transform into something else.  We can’t control what grows out of that.  Three things that struck me are:  1) We need strategies to navigate through that minefield; 2) diagnostic and navigation plans should be thought out in advance; and 3) we need to plan and build capacity within the community so that that discord has a positive effect or long-term transformative nature instead of leaving the community with a bad memory of dialogue.

Even if all parties don’t hear each other, an audience witnessing the dialogue might.  The unintended action may occur beyond the direct dialogue. 

Full Group Discussion (Day)
Michael:  What is defined as hearing someone may be different for people who don’t hear things at one point but do later on.  [Refers to Sarah Jessie Raphael show on Klan member who was converted by the end of the show due to the interactions she had with the audience.]

Michael:  You can capture a moment of not hearing and have it transform your ideas later on.  Hearing happens in motion, too. 

Lisa:  Looking at France and Le Pen, if we’re talking about democracy and action, we have to recognize the fact that choosing not to act is part of democracy in action. 

Barbara:  Biggest wake up moments happen when you’re going along with what someone is saying and then suddenly find that you no longer agree with them at all. 

It's hard to know what kind of impact it will have in the long run.

Sue:  We were saying, we don’t need you [the outside consultants].  It would have been interesting to connect with you guys.  You have these definitions of what dialogue is or isn’t and set forms.  We already think we know what those things are. 

Valerie:  Even we cannot agree about what dialogue is. 

Heather:  But there are some common characteristics.

Valerie:  We are all so often so far away from each other.  People think of dialogue and see debate.  They don’t want to get involved; it's not entertaining; and it's not always lively.

David:  How many of you have a grant, and do you have your checkbooks here?

Barbara:  When people started looking for dialogue trainers, they would go to the web sites for organizations and methods and find one who seemed to have a good format or who was open to pursuing their questions.  The work of building and framing the dialogue concepts happened before we started discussing the connection between the art and the dialogue.  There was then a lot of tension around connecting the dialogue with the art and culture side of the house.  Now, the methodologies are starting to fuse and transform.  We were in camps at the beginning.

Kinshasa:  The tension of operating all of this in areas of tremendous social upheaval is significant.  My question is about how you operate these wonderful ABCDs and animate democracy in places where people are so disenfranchised or hate each other.  Are we trying to work with people who are fellow travelers or do we try to transform existing structures?  [She refers to the LA riots.]  Where does an ADI project fit into these volatile, entrenched contexts?

Tory:  Paulo Friere; Augusto Boal; Ira Schorr—already being done in civic dialogue and education fields.  There's a lot of stuff that’s already out there that we can adapt for our own means.

Don:  What is our point of engagement?  What is our response to this big picture?  When you look at the culture of democracy in this country, how many people would need to get off their butts and get involved to make a difference?  Finding a sustainable role involves sustaining our own hope and forming alliances to the point where we have a critical mass.  Artists understand the individual transformation that is needed, which is an understanding that some of the dialogue technicians lack.  We have to win over people’s minds and souls and think hard about how you get people to change. 

Kinshasa:  Part of the disconnect with leadership and capacity is that the mayors are so busy dealing with major issues that . . . [they don't have time to lay the ground for real democratic civic discussion?].  ADI's job isn’t to cure social ills.  It's taking place in a really impoverished democratic sphere, and many vexing questions remain. 

Don:  These are fundamentally cultural questions; who better than cultural workers to deal with these issues?  We need to reinvigorate our social imagination; we need to be leaders in our media and cultural worlds. 

Jessica:  As a museum, we tend to adopt a missionary position.  We want people to like us.  We need to be prepared to go into arenas where we’re not liked to engage a democratic space where people disagree with us.  How do we create a space for ourselves to go after specific community issues with this in mind?

Valerie:  There was something about Liz’s process that became a magnet for people.  People experienced empathy, which is often lost in the equation.  People go into neutral, objective space in dialogues.  This allows bridges to be built.  We can help negotiate if we position ourselves to move and sway back and forth.  People tend to feel a lack of empathy with the mediator.  We need to translate the process into something organic and sustainable.