In September 2002 MACLA—a San José-based Latino contemporary arts space—premiered Ties that Bind: Exploring the Role of Intermarriage Between Latinos and Asians in Silicon Valley. This exhibition was a photography-based installation of new work by artists Lissa Jones and Jennifer Ahn that reflected on the history of Asian-Latino intermarriage and contemporary perceptions of ethnicity in the San José area. Capitalizing on the groundswell of public interest in ethnic and racial hybridization trends borne out by Census 2000, the Ties that Bind exhibition and...

The Poetry Dialogues project was a series of intergenerational workshops, presentations, and community dialogues that utilized contemporary and traditional poetry forms—including rap, spoken word, African jali (or griot) praise poetry, Muslim prayer-calling, and Filipino balagtasan—to engage audiences and communities in dialogue on self-defined issues. The Poetry Dialogues project was based on an exploration of dialogic poetry, the concept of poetry as dialogue and its potential to contribute to a broader civic dialogue. The project included: intergenerational dialogue...

The Slave Galleries Project was a collaboration between St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to restore and interpret the two slave galleries located in the church—cramped rooms where African American congregants were segregated during the nineteenth century. Over a year’s time, guided by two dialogue professionals experienced in intergroup relations, community preservationists first talked among themselves about issues of marginalization on the Lower East Side. 

The Slave Galleries Project illuminates issues of...

On the island of Hawai’i, residents of the rural region of Kohala deliberated how best to conserve a statue of King Kamehameha I—a hero revered as the indigenous unifier of the Hawai’ian islands and native son to Kohala: should the statue be restored to gilded bronze, the original intent of the mainland artist; or should it be repainted in life-like colors, thereby continuing a longstanding community tradition? Through the respectful collaboration of the Hawai’i Alliance for Arts Education, conservator Glenn Wharton, and the Kohala community's leaders and...

Arte es Vida is an ongoing program of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio. Supported by Animating Democracy from 2001 to 2003, Arte es Vida addresses issues of cultural equity and democracy, examining “the role of artistic and cultural expression in a society that inherits the deep wounds, economic and political disparities, and continuing practices of injustice that are the legacy of cultural domination in the United States.” It explores cultural grounding—the concept that a strong sense of selfhood and identity, as rooted in creative expression and...

The Center for Cultural Exchange’s African in Maine aimed to build culture and community by assisting three newcomer African communities in Portland with developing cultural programming that would represent  their respective cultures and people. Dialogue occurred first within each of the Sudanese, Congolese, and Somali groups and second between individual African groups and the wider, white community of “Mainers.” The project aimed to address how cultural representation (or misrepresentation) can impact public perception of refugee communities and aimed to...