Making Space for Community Conversation in Oregon

Oregon Humanities' Conversation Project provides communities across the state with opportunities to engage in facilitated conversations about pressing issues. Image courtesy of Oregon Humanities. — Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project provides communities across the state with opportunities to engage in facilitated conversations about pressing issues. Image courtesy of Oregon Humanities.

Oregon Humanities, the state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, supports community dialogue around important issues through its Conversation Project. Facilitated conversations held on a variety of topics challenge community members to express their opinions and consider new perspectives. The program inspires inquiry and reflection and fosters trust, relationships, and a sense of agency—all with the goal of creating more just communities throughout the state.

“There is a strong and continued interest in questions around race and identity. The toughest questions—where there seems to be the most division—those are what people want to talk about most.”

–Adam Davis, Executive Director, Oregon Humanities

Nonprofits, businesses, and other organizations throughout the state request to host community conversations from a catalog of nearly sixty topics designed to appeal to a diverse range of communities. Oregon Humanities sends trained facilitators to guide these conversations. Topics range from food and hip hop to faith and politics. Some of the most popular topics are “The Space Between Us: Immigrants, Refugees, and Oregon”; “How do Our Values Influence Environmental Policy?”; “Talking About Dying”; and “Who Are the Deserving Poor?”

The Conversation Project seeks facilitators who reflect the diversity of Oregon—they are artists, educators, social workers, and civil servants, among others. Though all are experts in their own domains, the project trains them to approach their role as conversational guides rather than instructors. For facilitators and participants alike, the Conversation Project offers spaces where people are encouraged to ask open-ended questions, where thinking about what they believe and why matters more than having an answer. They come from a variety of backgrounds and represent a range of generations.

Conversations are hosted by businesses, non-profits, and other community organizations. Image courtesy of Oregon Humanities.

Trained facilitators help communities reflect on difficult topics, listen to one another, and find common ground. Image courtesy of Oregon Humanities.

By training these experts to facilitate conversations, Oregon Humanities also continuously built a kind of civic infrastructure: individuals, located throughout the state, who can help others bridge divides and hear one another. And this impact extended beyond the state, as Oregon Humanities trained facilitators from around the country who returned home and hosted conversations in their own communities.