Workshops
Build relationships across differences.
We offer online and in-person workshops designed to build relationships across differences. During a 1-2 hour session, participants share their own photographs and stories about a pre-selected topic. They engage one another with questions of genuine curiosity. And they reflect on the ways they were impacted by the experience. Along the way, your group will become familiar with photovoice and have the opportunity to explore what a project or training could accomplish.
Our Workshops Include…
Seeing & Believing: How Our Beliefs, Practices, and Values Shape Daily Life
Interfaith dialogue is no longer enough. We need interfaith engagement. This workshop offers an arts-based approach to interfaith engagement for multi-faith groups in a shared community.
Seeing & Believing invites participants to use their own photos to explore the ways their beliefs, practices and values show up in everyday life.
The workshop will use photovoice to deepen multi-faith relationships, increase religious literacy, and identify shared needs and concerns in the community to begin the path to change.
Estimated budget: $1,250-3000, plus travel.
“Having the prayer rug displayed on the back of the [office] chair helps me connect with God all the time.”
— Ali (USA)
Portraits of Belonging: Picturing Inclusive and Equitable Communities
A two-hour workshop for approximately 20 participants about the bridges and barriers to belonging in our communities. It will also introduce photovoice as a transformative way for students to build relationships, understanding, and empathy across differences.
Participants will identify common experiences, needs, and concerns. They will also work together to develop a more robust understanding of how others experience religion, spirituality, and belonging; empathy for others; and a shared vision for what a more inclusive world might look like.
Estimated budget: $1,250 - 3,000, plus travel.
“Sometimes to be accepted into a group, you have to think the right thoughts, wear the right clothes, know the right people. You have to morph into the right puzzle shape that the group is missing. To belong is to be accepted into the beautiful mosaic of originality and authenticity that is unique to each group of people. To belong is to be embraced for who you already are.”
— Sarah, Texas Christian University
The Art of Navigating Disagreement
From hot button political issues to highly specific personal disagreements, the key to navigating any interpersonal or social conflict is understanding.
Our process adapts tools from the field of conflict resolution for visual storytelling. We give each participant an equal and protected period to share their response to the prompt with a degree of vulnerability and detail that they are comfortable with.
You will learn tools to help you navigate the conflict. This does not mean that people will change what “side” they are on, nor will it erase the embodied contexts in which the conflict arose. Instead, we open an invitation to understanding that will help you and your campus, workplace, congregation, or community learn how to navigate the disagreement with greater understanding, empathy, and confidence while prioritizing relationships.
We will always have disagreements; this workshop is about how we disagree.
Estimated budget: $2,000 - 4,000, plus travel.
This collage submitted by a woman named Michelle from a project in Richmond, Virginia sparked a lot of conversation in her small group. Aleta, an Episcopalian woman with anti-gun beliefs, testified to how the photovoice process helped create a bridge in understanding between her and Greg, a pro-gun Episcopalian.
“I was impressed with his ability to hear what I was saying. He didn’t just write off me as some crazy anti-gun old woman. And I tried to do the same thing. I really tried to understand what it was he liked about guns.”
From Good to Great: Team-Building Workshop
We help create stronger teams through photovoice. Our process combines smartphone photography and structured conversations around specific topics informed by organizational values and goals.
Participants compose photographs in response to prompts that explore their lived experiences. During our two- to four-hour seminar, they share their photos and tell the stories behind them in discussions designed to build understanding, empathy, and civility.
When people are included, visible, empowered, and connected they experience belonging and they flourish. And when teams flourish, so do their organizations.
Estimated budget: $3,500 to 5,500, plus travel.
“The photovoice workshop turned a few simple photos into meaningful conversations with colleagues we see every day and those we do not get the chance to work with as often. By connecting our personal lives with our work stories, we discovered shared interests and mutual connections, building stronger relationships with one another.”
— Anonymous participant, Grand Valley State University
Have something else in mind? We also do custom workshops.
We’ll design a workshop for your group that explores a specific topic, such as believing and belonging on campus, faith in the workplace, or faith and flourishing. During the workshop, participants will discuss their photos and explore the ways these conversations build relationships across difference and offer insights into the lived experiences of people from different walks of life. These workshops are offered for a small fee plus expenses if travel is involved. Schedule a meeting to learn more about our custom workshops.