Cultural Diplomacy

The Annual Conference on Cultural Diplomacy in the UN. 

Promoting Global Collaboration, Unity and Peace through Cultural Diplomacy.

February 28, 2018 at 5:15PM

Problem-solving and Development for Cultural Community

By Kathleen Laziza

1. Thanks for inviting Micro Museum. I am an interdisciplinary artist with a rich history of training America’s next entrepreneurs through creative industries and arts. I spent a decade of time dedicating my attention to cultural tourism in Downtown Brooklyn. It is a delight to share with you what I have learned on over 3 decades in the field. We will start as I always do with any new idea; I begin at the end and imagine my way forward.

2.  Community: I think back on my experiences of building a community where there was none for a population that nobody cared about as creating economic ripples beyond measure because it was designed to allow neighbors to be a part of something larger than one self.  There is a strong essence in all people no matter what the differences are between us and that is to have fun together. Fun is society’s glue. It is sometimes surprising how cost effective having fun together is for cultural diplomacy. The ripples of goodwill have always been a uniting force   

3. Cultural: Independent artists in the USA stopped receiving national public money in the early 1990s. In the words of my at the time 9 year old what asked me in all sincerity as I cried over the sever completion in my chosen field.  He says: I am so curious; at the time you decided to become an artist what were you thinking? Really? Fine arts? Hardly anyone cares about fine art. What he said is true. Art participation can be costly endeavors; it is not for everyone’s taste. While art enhances cultural, culture is fundamentally a freestanding renewable resource because it has the ability to be niche environments.  Which I why I advocate shared experiences. I am going to offer you an idea that can be adapted to fit the community you are developing.  It is Micro Museum’s “Simultaneous Dance”. This simultaneous dance could be adapted to be company-wide, housing unit-wide, school-wide, neighborhood-wide, city, country, state-wide even world wide but since my experiences are designed to be user friendly; I brought my simultaneous dances to institutions and educational facilities. But you should feel free to do anything you want with the idea. The concept is to identify your intended population where you want to build cohesion. Select the Simultaneous Dance Day and instruct everyone that throughout the day and on the hour for one minute they are to disengage from what they are doing and dance for 60 seconds. It helps if participants select some music tunes to help them dance with some abandon. Sometimes participants could decide together like a classroom might do or it could be a person’s personal choice or sometimes I created a playlist that was a bit like musical roulette. Use whatever variations you need to meet the demands of your exact environment. This concept is highly adaptable but it gets the same results – to have a creative shared experiences together and in under 10 minutes.

4. Development: If shared experience is the glue of community and culture the environment; then development is the fuel. This is hardest part for any community. Needs shift, demographics change, technology influences our communication choices, key people grow past your system, catastrophic events happen, climate change occurs etc…. etc…. This is where the 21century model for the over segmentation of people into smaller and smaller niches fail us now because, narrowing our focus cannot create the kind of diversity needed for longevity. This is why creating a long-term plan is one of the best ways to map progress. It starts with writing down a one page personal credo and then taking the time to review it every 6 months to a year.  A personal or group credo answers several key questions. As a group effort writing a credo is like building the foundation for growth. The pronouns are can be interchangeable.

Why are you doing what you are doing?

 What were the steps you took to get to this place at this time?

 Name one characteristic of your management style?

 How do you think that styles influences you or your view of others?

 Do you have any personal models that influence you, how to you share those ideas with others?

The reason I suggest that you do this is 2 fold because leadership starts with us as individuals and group communication is rarely straightforward, it is usually roundabout. The credo is helpful to know where you stand first before you try to intersect with others, even if you are all going the same direction, there are a million ways to fail and only about a hundred ways to succeed.

 5. Problem-solving: There is conventional wisdom in artist circles that the art is already present in the room and it the artist task to unlock it and make it actual. It is almost the same thing when building consensus. The solution is there; it is up to us to recognize the advantages and disadvantages. Since human beings are uniquely designed to under-estimate what it takes to be successful and over-estimate the joy we will receive when we achieve that success. We strive to get better at agreeing to have a modified value for success. One example is taking the time to give your group credit for smaller successes along the way. You all had a meeting where everyone came promptly and was ready to contribute or listen but what happens when ideas actually crash and burn? What happens when the human needs are too far apart?  I’d like to tell you a story that happened in Brooklyn during a heavy racial outburst between Asian merchants and African American customers during the David Dinkins administration. I was involved in a community discussion where we created a sounding board event for people to voice their grievances. We limited it to 2 hours and 200 people attended. 2 hours was no enough time. At the end of the 2 hours the community was more wounded than when it started. People were very angry, the auditorium was hot, there was no apparent answer that would help either group to move forward because nerves were frayed. That was until we arranged for buckets of ice cream to be distributed by a cone or a cup to everyone there. We then opened the floor to recommendations from the same speakers for how to become better neighbors. To this day I cannot tell you whether the ice cream itself was the suave for that open wound or the act of sharing something cool on a hot night together that brought out more humane qualities in the audience but I know that finding opportunities to share an experience together is the most time effect way look at one another not as competitors but collaborators.