Community Dialogues

Community Dialogues

Community Dialogues seek to cultivate connection and deep learning through exploration of critical and contentious issues. This series is focused on providing space for participants to practice the skills of dialogue and deliberation. 

We hope to engage with dialogue where participants will:

  • Deepen insight into multiple perspectives and stimulate complex, nuanced thinking on the tensions within critical issues
  • Prepare students to navigate a diverse world with a curious perspective-seeking frame
  • Practice and cultivate dialogic skills
  • Guide exploration of personal ethics, morals, and values
  • Build and contextualize awareness of self in relationship to others in their community
  • Foster connection between participants by relating to each other with genuine curiosity, interest, and imagination
  • Inspire socio-political action, both individual and collective

Community Dialogues is an initiative offered in partnership by Community Engagement & Leadership, University Housing & Dining Services - Diversity Initiatives & Programs, and the Office of Institutional Diversity.

Register For Upcoming Dialogues!

Community Dialogues have used a Story Circle format for a majority of our dialogues.

Story circles are often understood as deriving from Indigenous traditions that develop a practice for community telling and listening projects. Story circles allow participants to share stories from their own experience or imagination as individuals in a small group. Stories that are shared follow a prompt that relates to the theme of the Community Dialogue. Learn more about story circles.

Upcoming Dialogues

 

Fall Community Dialogue Offerings

Building Belonging: A Practical Conversation on Developing Community

Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, 5 - 7pm

Doors Close at 5:30pm

Location: MU 109

Register on the CEL homepage.

Elections & Emotions

Part 1: Before Election Day

Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, 5 - 6:30pm

Location: MU 104

Localist Event

Part 2: Post Election Day

Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, 5 - 6:30pm

Location: MU 208

Localist Event

 

Winter Community Dialogue Offerings

TBA

 

Spring Community Dialogue Offerings

TBA

 

Have ideas for topics?  Know faculty/staff you would love to hear from at the start of a dialogue?  Send your suggestions to cel@oregonstate.edu.

To learn more about the Community Dialogues initiative or request accommodations, please contact [email protected] or 541-737-3041.

Reqeusting a Dialogue

What Are Dialogues by Request? 

Dialogues are one of the many immersive events CEL offers in order to actively engage with one another in order to become more self-aware, empathic, relational, and discerning leaders in the communities we find ourselves in and outside of OSU. Dialogues By Request is an extension of our  Community Dialogues events and is offered by request to student organizations & clubs, fraternity and sorority chapters, departments, classes, staff teams, and other groups within the OSU community.

We offer a variety of dialogic formats and encourage a consultation with one of our staff members in order to identify the best format and fit for the conversation you wish to have. This can be done before or after submitting a request form. Please make sure you have read the website information in its entirety before proceeding to request a dialogue.

Dialogue Disclaimer 

While dialogues are a space meant to facilitate discussion rooted in lived experiences and across difference, they will NOT be a space for argument or debate. Many of the stories and experiences shared during these sessions are from a personal perspective and are reflective of individual experience. Please hold respect for yourself and others within the space by practicing active listening and allowing students their full amount of time to share. 


Dialogues are a space that welcomes and encourages vulnerability. However, it cannot be a replacement for psychological services. If you or someone you know are in crisis or you would like to speak to a professional, please visit the CAPS webpage for more information. 

If you are interested in having CEL host a dialogue with your students or group, please fill out the form below.  For preparation and planning purposes, please submit your request at least two (2) weeks in advance.

Dialogues by Request Form

Using Story Circles


Thank you for your interest to utilize storytelling in your community. Story Circles is a storytelling process that can be used for a stand alone event, as an icebreaker, or main activity for generating connectivity and dialogue between people.

A Story Circle is a small group of individuals sitting in a circle, sharing stories - usually from their own experience or imagination - focusing on a common theme. As each person in turn shares a story, a richer and more complex story emerges. By the end, people see both real differences and things their stories have in common. A Story Circle is a journey into its theme, with multiple dimensions, twists, and turns.

Story Circles are something general and specific and storytelling is something that people have done time immemorial. Story Circles are often understood as deriving from Indigenous traditions. There are many variations. Theatermakers such as Roadside Theater and John O’Neal have been central in developing the practice for use in creating original performance and community telling and listening projects. Story Circles can become practical interventions for building shared power and moving to action after hearing themes from the stories and building relationships between individuals.

Each Story Circle is unique and can take on the energy of the group. They can support perspective taking, empathy, cultural humility, listening, courage, vulnerability and healing. Story Circles can be light or deep - depending upon the hopes, intentions, and outcomes of your group. Story circles allow for civic dialogue. Opinion is so polarized, story circles help us find a way that to can sit alongside each other and develop empathy.

We started using Story Circles as a part of the People’s State of the Union Campaign, US Department of Arts & Culture.

 

Roadside Theater: Telling stories through the power of theater, music, media, education, and other arts

Some quotes that can be used:

“Stories are powerful and deeply part of who we are. When we center our stories, we open spaces for building trust, community, and shifting culture. As a leader, I have learned that creating and investing in relationships are integral to transforming the world we live in. Story Circles are profoundly important to the process.” ~Micknai Arefaine

"Story Circles taught me nearly everything I know about leadership. They showed me that true leadership is not about how many projects your complete or how many people your reach, but more so about the quality of connection/understanding you have amongst your peers, and how that connection is the essential foundation of doing meaningful work." ~Hunter Briggs

The Story Circles tool was brought to OSU through our participation in the People’s State of the Union, Dare to Imagine, and Imaginings campaigns (2015-2018) by Charlene Martinez who served in the role of Integrated Learning for Social Change, a program within Diversity & Cultural Engagement and as an USDAC Cultural Agent.

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People standing in front of a presentation
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students sitting at tables during an event