Dialoguing: On Community, Power, and Privilege

Slought is pleased to announce Dialoguing: On Community, Power, and Privilege, a day of facilitated workshops and collective reflection on socially just relations in Philadelphia, on Friday, April 19, 2019 from 10:30am-2:30pm. Lunch will be served! This day of activities will bring together Philadelphians who are invested in realizing a more socially just city. Activities will include co-archiving shared history, critical consideration of channels for voice and participation in decision making, and workshopping research and projects for enhanced social value.

The event will offer attendees a safe and thought provoking environment in which to reflect on obligations related to social justice. Participants will explore how their affiliations impact their power and privilege, and will consider how to leverage such positioning to address community priorities. Participants will leave the event with a new toolkit for thinking about self and society, and for engaging this new framework practically. Additionally, participants will collectively consider how to discuss social positioning in the community in a way which promotes empathy, critical self reflection, and love.

Morning Workshop: Integral Living Research
10:30am-12:00pm

Dee Nicholas will present her work, Integral Living Research, which is predicated on ongoing collaborations between the disciplines of architecture, interior design, public health and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields, and developed through deep experience in human-centered design research that focuses on advocacy and urban living space. The mission is to help remove living stress for urban families in need, and create tools that can function as a bridge to improved health in urban conditions. Nicholas will also speak on the Design Research Methods she teaches and deploys in her research work and the MS Design Research Program at Drexel. The group will do a short workshop in understanding the context and relationship between their work and human centered design. Audience members will come away with a sense of the research context and possible tools to expand their reach with their research.

Lunchtime Workshop: Empathetic Listening
12:00-1:00pm

Chris Satullo will facilitate a lunchtime session on empathetic listening and strategies for engaging in productive discourse in the presence of stratified political holdings. The strategies will be excerpted from a toolkit used in a civic dialogue series entitled, Can We Talk. Participants will have an opportunity to practice the strategies and will come away with a discursive toolkit that can be employed in a variety of settings.

Afternoon Workshop: Revealed
1:00-2:30pm

Britt Dahlberg and Alexis Pedrick will facilitate a History Lab Session revealed. They will share the 'why' behind their work engaging with the Ambler, PA community around the issue of asbestos. They will explore the public seminar series as a unique kind of inquiry space, and share the personal and institutional 'why's behind this. Via an interactive component, they will then take people through the "joint inquiry" experience we've built, and explore the ways in which research intersects with the process of a public dialogue series. This session will serve to foster a discussion about our roles in research, as researchers, participants, or later audiences; kinds of dynamics we foster unintentionally and can think intentionally about; and next steps in these modalities.