The holiday season often means more gatherings, which sometimes puts us in the middle of difficult conversations. Talk of politics and other hot topics can be tricky to navigate with family and friends – especially when we don’t see eye to eye. How can we engage in important conversations, without things getting out of hand?

We at NCDD want to share some tips and resources that you can use to help keep the party and dinner conversations more about genuine dialogue and understanding despite differences than heated rhetoric and emotional outbursts.

In addition to our quick tips above, NCDD  has tons more resources that might help you have difficult conversations and good dialogue in our Resource Center. If you’re looking for some additional go-to resources, consider these:

• The Quick How-To Guide for the Conversation Café process includes agreements and questions that can be helpful ways to start and manage conversations that might prove difficult
• For another good list of tips about keeping things civil during holiday dinners, check out the “Holidays or Hellidays?” blog post from NCDD member organization Essential Partners
• And if you need a reminder or cheat sheet with some similar good conversation tips to keep in your pocket in case of emergency, you can print out this short list of dialogue techniques from NCDD member organization Building Dialogue

Even if there are fights and arguments, we hope some of these tips and resources will help you navigate your holiday gatherings better than the past. Whatever happens during your Thanksgiving dinner with friends or family, we are wishing you all a safe and positive weekend.

H.R.6843 - Building Civic Bridges Act was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Andy Barr [R-KY-6]* & Rep. Derek Kilmer [D-WA-6] with 20 cosponsors in the Education and Labor committee on 02/25/2022 to help local communities foster civil discourse to address shared challenges. The bill would establish a new, non-partisan pilot program, led by an Office of Civic Bridgebuilding, within AmeriCorps focused on building relationships across lines of difference. The program would have four core pillars:

• Administering a grant program to support civic bridgebuilding programs across the nation;
• Supporting the training of AmeriCorps members in civic bridgebuilding skills and techniques;
• Supporting research on civic bridgebuilding, civic engagement, and social cohesion; and
• Activating a public conversation about the importance of civic bridgebuilding by serving a key role as both a convening and coordinating partner to the national civic bridgebuilding movement—providing resources, network, and collaboration opportunities to the field.

Executive Director, Courtney Breese was recently featured on the Co-creating Peace Podcast, hosted by NCDD Member Kathleen Oweegon. The Co-creating Peace episode "Let's Talk About It" (episode 66) is part of a series about conscious communication and conflict transformation.  From the episode description:

The difficulties we have with one another are very often the result of lack of insight and understanding. In the absence of information we make assumptions about one another – assumptions that often lead to conflict.

There is a cure for this phenomenon, and that is dialogue – sitting down with one another to have conversations that help us to learn about one another at deeper levels. When we put aside our assumptions, our biases, and the fears on which those are often based, and enter into dialogue with not only a willingness, but a desire, to learn about others and the way they experience and see the world, and then deliberate together to arrive at paths forward that can better meet the needs of all, we begin to build bridges of peace which can one day span the world.

America Talks is back April 21 and 23, and now is the time to sign up!

America Talks (April 21 & 23) invites Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs to connect one-on-one or in small groups, face-to-face on video. America Talks is powered by over 150 nonpartisan, bridge building organizations and promoted by USA TODAY and other media partners. This is an exciting opportunity to meet other Americans who want to connect across differences and talk. You can sign up to participate on one or both of these dates at this link. 

The 5th annual National Week of Conversation that follows (April 24-30), invites Americans to find their place in the bridging movement with events hosted by over 80 bridging organizations. These events provide Americans from every corner of the United States the opportunity to discover common interests, solve problems and raise their voices together. Join lots of NCDD member orgs and friends to connect, discuss, and decide together in the many events being offered throughout the week! 

Are you hosting an event during National Week of Conversation? Let us know! Add your event in the comments. Don't forget a link for people to find out how to join!

The National Civic League, an NCDD member organization, released the National Civic Review (NCR) Summer 2021 edition and  NCDD members receive a digital copy of NCR for free! (Find the access code below.). This esteemed quarterly journal offers insights and examples of civic engagement and deliberative governance from around the country. Thanks to Rebecca Trout, NCL’s Program Director for All-America City Award & Communications, for sharing this announcement with the NCDD network!
Friendly reminder that the League is always seeking articles for NCR on community-based examples of civic engagement, public deliberation, co-production, and democratic innovation – more info here.

Students spend most of their days in school. Naturally, when national events occur, this extends the teachers regular duties to the role of  “first responders”. This publication from Essential Partners was adapted for the classroom from their Reflective Structured Dialogue, and is offered as a tool for teachers to create a space of self- reflection, deep listening and open sharing in the classroom.  The prompts and guidelines to consider, proactively invite the students to process crisis in a healthy way.
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Read about the structure and prompts offered below or find the original post here.

By Lydia Hooper

How many conversations have you had this week about something you saw, on TV or happening in front if you? Vision is the primary way we sense and experience our world, and we are social beings who process information with others. We can easily leverage these tendencies if we want to inspire specific conversations in specific moments.

​The conventional way of doing so is using presentation slides or videos to introduce or explain important topics. These visual forms, however, emphasize what is important from the perspective of the presenter. They do not necessarily offer opportunities to capture what a larger group of people thinks or feels.

Looking back, 2016 was an important year for NCDD and the dialogue & deliberation community. NCDD and the field saw a lot of important things happen and transitions take place, and as we look forward to the work ahead, we also wanted to look back at what we’ve accomplished and what’s changed.

NCDD 2016
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​Of course, the biggest effort on NCDD’s part was organizing the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation on “Bridging Our Divides,” a timely focus on the important work of bringing people together across differences of politics, race, socioeconomic status, and more. We had 350 public engagement practitioners, journalists, academics, public officials, funders, and students converge for this three-day gathering focused on sharing stories, exploring collaborations, and talking about what’s next for the dialogue and deliberation community following the divisive election season. You can view the schedule and speakers, watch panels, and more in the Events section of our site.

As we begin the new year, NCDD is excited to announce we are launching a two-year partnership with the American Library Association (ALA) that will train library staff across the country to use methods and processes from the dialogue and deliberation field to support their communities. Our Libraries Transforming Communities: Models for Change partnership will take the form of both online and in-person trainings that we hope will help strengthen the capacity for libraries to serve not only as places of learning and research, but also as hubs for dialogue, engagement, and healing our divides.
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We see this partnership as a chance to broaden the reach and the impact of our field’s work, as well as an opportunity to create new audiences and collaborative potentials for D&D practitioners in the future. We’ll be sharing more info on the partnership soon, but for now, we encourage you to read more about the upcoming trainings in the ALA announcement below or to find the original here.