Dialogues and Conversations

Dialogues and Conversations

Coordinator

Christi Lee

Program

Dialogues and Conversations

Dialogues and Conversations

Throughout its history, CBI has collaborated with community partners to offer dialogues and facilitated conversations around issues of equity and inclusion. To us, conversation is more than “just talk;” rather, it is an essential first step toward building the relationships and connections that can create a more equitable and just community. We believe being able to examine some of our community’s most intractable problems is a key skill that helps people wake up to discrimination and injustice, interrupt inequitable systems and structures, and step up to champion equal rights, access, and opportunity.

 

Our conversation model continues to be adapted for a variety of audiences and topics. Please click here to contact us or fill out the form on this page to discuss how we could support a virtual or in-person conversation with your organization.

 

Throughout 2021, dialogues on our recent Stakeholders Breakfast theme of Fault Lines will help us explore the divisions that have become more apparent over the last year. Visit our Things To Do page to join an upcoming conversation to learn how you can respond to Fault Lines in our community with hope and courage. 

 

Looking for support for a challenging conversation in your sphere of influence? Our Talking Together in Challenging Times guide can help you begin. 

Highlighted Past Conversations:

 

2020

CBI works with Duke Energy’s “Pathways to Inclusion” to support conversations among groups of employees in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. 

 

2019

CBI partners with Three Bone Theatre and its production of OSLO by developing conversation cards for attendees. 

 

2018 

CBI partners with OZS Consulting to support the implementation of community dialogues in conjunction with Opera Carolina’s production of I Dream. 

 

2017 

A year after Charlotte’s demonstrations, protests, and civil unrest that occurred in September 2016, CBI provided the Remembering September 2016 framework for continued community conversation.

 

2015 

CBI partners with the Levine Museum to offer Nuevo DIA, a public dialogue series in conjunction with the Levine Museum’s “¡Nuevolution! Latinos & the New South” exhibit. 

 

After the murders at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17th, 2015, CBI and OZS Consulting offered the Talking About Charleston guide to help us connect, reflect, and talk about what happened, and what it means for each of us, both personally and for our community here in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

 

2013 

CBI partners with CRC and the YWCA on two community conversations based on “The Danger of a Single Story.”

 

CBI and OZS Consulting are engaged by the Gantt Center to develop a facilitated dialogue model to support the “Question Bridge: Black Males” exhibit. 

 

2011 

In partnership with Crossroads Charlotte, Discovery Place, and OZS Consulting, CBI develops and implements “RACE Exchanges” – a series of facilitated dialogues based on the exhibit, Race: Are We So Different? The series engaged more than 2,000 people. 

 

2009

“Speaking of Change,” CBI’s partnership with the Levine Museum’s “Changing Places” exhibit offered a public dialogue series engaging more than 1,500 people. 

 

2008

CBI partners with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee and Mecklenburg Ministries on “Salting the Roads,” an open letter to the community in response to the turmoil that erupted in the community as a result of the process to appoint a new Mecklenburg County sheriff. The “Salting the Roads” letter led to the development of the “Can We Talk? community conversations series. 

 

2004 – 2005

CBI partners with the Levine Museum on “Conversations on Courage,” a dialogue project in conjunction with the Museum’s exhibit “COURAGE: The Carolina Story That Changed America.”  

 

Following the success of the dialogue project, CBI launched a follow-up project, “Organizational Courage,” to further extended conversation.

 

Contact Us



    CBI’s Conversation Guide   creates a safe space for dialogue around issues of equity and inclusion. 

    GET THE GUIDE

    Visit our Things To Do     for upcoming dialogues and conversations

    JOIN US

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