By ERIN KELLEY
Guest Columnist
Every year for the past 27 years, Spirit & Place has held a community-wide festival exploring a yearly theme through the lens of the arts, humanities and religion. Throughout this time, Spirit & Place has tirelessly worked to create brave spaces for important dialogues throughout central Indiana.
This year, our theme focuses on the idea of IDENTIFY and asks the public to explore the roots of who we are and how we are shaped by the world.
Reflecting on the IDENTIFY theme, I am struck by the importance of identifying the power and influence “we the people” possess to shape society. All around us, everyday people are making exciting and positive contributions. They are shining examples of “people power.” Sometimes identifying these amazing stories during emotional news cycles and algorithmically driven social media posts is a challenge, but it is crucial we identify these positive contributions and figure out how we too can contribute.
I believe that by tapping into our individual people power, collective change can be born. It’s important in a democracy to recognize that individual people can make a change, especially when the work is shared with others who are equally committed to showing up for each other in public life.
The importance of people power
Spirit & Place holds an annual community-created festival of events every November as well as people-centered community engagement efforts and dialogues throughout the rest of the year. In everything we do, we are passionately driven by the goal of catalyzing civic engagement. But what really is civic engagement?
Simply put, “civic engagement” is showing up in public life. It’s the recognition that both individual and collective action to identify and address public concerns is a shared responsibility. Civic engagement includes political engagement, but it’s deeper than that. It’s people who show up in community life, whether that’s in your school, neighborhood, job, family or place of worship.
It’s crucial for community members to become involved in shaping and moving the central Indiana community forward because the idea that leaders above us are the only ones who can create change is not true. Tapping into our energy, innovation and heartfelt desire for meaningful change that exists at a grassroots level has the power to transform communities.
People power in action
Outside of our annual festival, Spirit & Place holds important dialogue sessions using the civic reflection dialogue method. This method anchors a group dialogue in a shared source material such as a poem, short reading, visual image or piece of music. The public is then invited to unpack their underlying beliefs and values around race with our Powerful Conversations on Race series and/or their civic values with our Civic Circle gatherings.
We support and celebrate the concept of people power by training community members to help facilitate these dialogues. By training others, Spirit & Place circulates its own power and resources to make a greater impact. Holding skills, knowledge and resources to oneself sets us up for a zero-sum game and slows down change. Rather, we work out of a mindset of abundance and trust. It never fails to excite us when our community facilitators tell us they have used their civic reflection dialogue skills in their workplaces, congregations or even family dining rooms. Some have even created events for the Spirit & Place festival based on their training.
By trusting the community and sharing what we can, Spirit & Place’s partners are free to make meaning of the world on their own terms. They are joyfully encouraged to share what they’ve learned through us and to put it into practice in the places and spaces where they believe positive change can be made.
How to work towards people power
We chose our festival theme of IDENTIFY this year because it’s important for people to identify and claim their true sense of self and then tap into their innate sense of people power. By creating brave spaces – spaces where we sit with discomfort and do not give up on each other when/if the conversation gets hard – we encourage the public to think about their own civic identities and practice the art of listening. Through listening without an agenda, that is, simply listening to another point of view to learn something new, we put into practice the sacred work of honoring each other’s humanity.
Whether with Spirit & Place or elsewhere, we hope you will connect with organizations in your community that promote civic engagement and take that first step in recognizing and affirming your own people power.
To learn more about Spirit & Place and how you can get involved with civic engagement through this year’s festival, visit spiritandplace.org.
Erin Kelly is the Program Director of Spirit and Place, a part of the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.