Convenings
Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Los Angeles, November 15–17, 2002
Andrea Assaf
2002
Dialogue and Diversity Session: Sustaining Difficult Dialogues
David Campt facilitates, tackling the question: How can we work through difficult moments in dialogues? This session investigated how to bring people to the table, keep them at the table, and continue the dialogue.
Q: In doing inter-group dialogue, how culturally specific are our choices?
At a moment of conflict, or to prevent conflict, establishing the agenda is important. We must be very clear from the beginning, or at that moment of conflict, we must review agenda and consider changing it.
Comment: This is all too surface, not deep enough.
Depth comes in part by recognizing that all types of knowledge need to be equally privileged.
Q: What types of knowledge?
Examples: expert vs. average, systemic vs. anecdotal, etc.
Questioning terms, digging for what's underneath the terms, willingness to define the terms…
David: This can be a distraction, but it can also help the conversation go deeper. Don’t to forget the role of art in facilitating greater depth. A metaphor or an image can take you somewhere else in a way that literal talk cannot.
A cultural organization should consider what exactly its role is. It is not a one-time assessment, but an every time assessment. In some situations it calls for creativity, other times it requires recruiting people, other times it presents questions. In a funny way, ADI almost implies that we play all of the roles.
Identifying who was in the dialogue in our own groups was important, it helped us see how that shapes the conversation. This can be used to recognize where our own organizations are...it depends on the scope of the project…Lisa mentioned the role of power, collaboration with church; it implies equity throughout the process, that involving community sets high expectations...but all those needs can't be answered. If I am the staff person that will steer the process…The individuals on the front line, coordinating the dialogue, will end up in a different place than the institution. (in a nutshell, “watch out for problems around power, you may not see them).” The partners may have a different level of commitment and readiness, but the larger groups they are representing may be ready to finish or close up.
