Building Bridges through Arts & Culture with Arlene Tucker
Welcome to Democracy & Belonging in Cities learning community, co-hosted by the Democracy and Belonging Forum and GMF Cities, with an invitation to join us for our fourth online session of the community taking place on Thursday, November 14.
Join us on Thursday, November 14 (8:00 - 9:15 a.m. PT/11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. ET/5:00 - 6:15 p.m. CET) for the fourth session of the Democracy and Belonging in Cities learning community, where we will be joined by Forum community member, artist, and educator Arlene Tucker. She will share her experiences as a non-Finnish born citizen who leverages arts and culture to bridge differences and support people’s sense of belonging, as well as her work as a “diversity agent” at Culture for All Service in Finland, whose initiative is to train immigrant arts and culture workers in diversity, equity, and belonging practices so they can engage in deeper dialogues with communities throughout the country. Arlene will also share her personal journey to embody what it means to be a diversity agent, the role of “accountability partners” as a support system for municipality workers and diversity agents, and her grounding in bridging and belonging to guide her work. We hope all will bring and share their experiences with learning how to foster cultures of belonging especially through collective co-creation efforts.
You can register for Session 4 here.
As has been our practice with each session, our goal for this learning community is to have a fertile space to continue exploring bridging perspectives around cities, democracy, and belonging and to bring practices of storytelling, listening, and reflection as ways to cultivate our own leadership capacities to support thriving cities.
The organization of this learning community came out a recognition that within the networks of the Democracy and Belonging Forum and the GMF Cities Program, there are many engaged in the long term process of learning about how to foster conditions in municipalities that enable all people to feel a true sense of belonging, not as a passive sentiment but rather one that instills a sense of agency and desire to care and contribute to betterment of their society for all, and in other words to participate in democracy. These sessions have been opportunities to explore this question in light of ours and others’ experiences with the role individuals, institutions and communities are playing to create such conditions in diverse settings.
Prior to joining the session, feel free to get acquainted with the Forum Values & Principles.
