Dialogue Evening
What is the Dialogue Evening project about?
Dialogue evenings are an initiative of collaboratio helvetica, which invites the Swiss population to a lively and meaningful exchange on socially relevant topics.
A Dialogue Evening is a 3-hour event moderated by a host team that guides the participants through a conversation around the topic. The host team consists of an experienced collaboratio helvetica facilitator and a local person. The desired number of participants is between 8 and 18 persons. Every Dialogue relates to an SDG topic (e.g. gender equality, fair work, environment, etc.). These themes can vary and are chosen according to local needs and interests.
All interested and curious people from a local community are cordially invited to participate. During the dialogue evening, the participants go through a process that helps them to connect with the topic on a personal level, to reflect together and to gain new insights from it. Furthermore, the method also opens up new social perspectives and solutions for the relevant topics by using the collective intelligence and perception of the group.
What is the vision behind?
Ultimately, the Dialogue evenings intend to sensitise people from all regions of Switzerland - urban and rural - to the challenges of our time and to offer them the opportunity for active participation. At the same time, we offer a space for Dialogue skills acquisition, and aim at widening and normalising Dialogue as a method in Switzerland.
In collaboratio helvetica, we want to test the assumption that we should expect less from our titles, ideologies or technology but more from each other as human beings. We want to open spaces in which we can enter into authentic, honest and human dialogues in order to strengthen local social cohesion and encourage different actors to act more together. Imagine that neighbors, local governments, businessmen, parents, teachers, children and pensioners come together to think about key issues, have meaningful conversations and find effective conclusions that shape their own context.
Dialogue EVENT PROTOTYPES
The Dialogue Prototypes are events that developed out of the Dialogue Trainings, where our Dialogue Training participants took their first steps applying their new dialogue skills at practical and real events and topics. With their Events they reached over 55 people in for different cantons:
SDG8: From power struggles to collaboration
SDG8: Tickling the tension around work - how to take ownership of our potential?
SDG12: Verantwortungsvoller Konsum und Produktion
SDG5: gender is an energy
Testimonials of Dialogue Training participants:
“My most important learning from Module 2 was how to balance and be there for space, How to hold tension, I would say how to be more aware of the tension. More I am aware more I can grow and more I grow more my surroundings grow” - Sarah Friederich
“I like the diversity of the exercises. We are thrown into difficult situations but you make sure there is a safe space for everyone.” - anonymous
“ I love the format of dialogue. It's potentially a gamechanging tool to lead the critical mass out of victimhood into a conscious and empowered state.” - Chaim Meister
Why do we work with Dialogue?
Dialogue evenings are dedicated to the challenge of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Switzerland through dialogue and collaboration between versatile actors from all areas of society.
All too often, complex issues such as poverty, climate change or gender discrimination are discussed only in the political arena, between "important" actors or between groups tending to insularity who shared the same opinion. We believe that any global or national challenge should also be addressed at the local level, by the people who best know the impact of the problem, in a way where people feel and connect to their own personal connection to the matter.
For this to succeed, however, we need the ability to listen to each other and enter into a constructive dialogue. That is why we want to create spaces all over the country where diversity and differences can come together to connect with each other as humans and collectively shape Switzerland of tomorrow.
What do we mean with Dialogue?
At collaboratio helvetica, one of our key method and principle is Dialogue.
By "Dialogue" we mean
the kinds of conversations that change something in us when we take part in them, and that shift something between the people who are involved in the conversation
Dialogues where we need to “risk” being authentic and to co-create a space where others can do the same
Dialogues about challenging our habits of thought and conversation: listening with attention, speaking with intention and daring to turn the camera around to face ourselves and the roles we might have within the systems we are trying to change
The Dialogue Space is a space where we try to learn and understand not through facts or intellectual knowledge, but through seeing another perspective through the eyes and story of someone else, and through getting a new sense of the broader ecosystem that the discussed issue is part of.
The connection between the Dialogue Evenings and the Social Labs:
Dialogue Evenings are the equivalent of the Social Lab at a local level. We will run Dialogue Evenings on questions related to the Quests of the Social Labs in different locations all over Switzerland, in order to involve the Swiss population in meaningful conversations around these topics. The output from these events directly feeds into the Social Labs, further advancing the discussion. Further, Dialogue Evenings are an opportunity for the host venue to establish a connection with the local community and position themselves as a forum where ideas, thoughts and feelings can be exchanged.
Our Dialogue Evening topics so far
SDGs and Social Lab related topics as well as individual topics, co-developed with the local hosts:
Learning to stay with the trouble
How to think in times of societal urgency
Exploring Gender Equality
Fairplay at Work
What is Regenerative Travel?
Über die Gleichstellung der Geschlechter (Teil 2)
A dialogue about how to think in times of urgencies
Exploring sustainable consumption (Lausanne)
Sustainable consumption (Geneva, Bern)
Exploring sustainable consumption (Lausanne)
Dialogue Evening by the Imperfect Circle: Go queer or go home – Our lives beyond normativity!
Can work be regenerative?