The Art of Building Relationships for Social Justice Allison Schuette TEDxValparaisoUniversity

it's 2006 I'm teaching in my second year at valare University intro to creative writing and want to help my students realize that they can Bridge their interest in personal expression with social concerns so I've created an assignment in which we will be researching race and ethnicity on Val preo's campus to create documentary theater project we've met with Dr Judy Miller in the archives she's helped us Identify some key historical events we'll need to further research and as class we've come up with list of groups we feel like will in some way need to be represented in the project over the weekend students are told that they should sign up for one of these groups and identify who they will interview Monday morning rolls around and I'm preparing for class and noticed there is one group that no one has signed up for it is African-Americans and this feels meaningful to me we are class of predominantly white students and am white faculty member so it seems worth our time to talk about so when go into class ask people why didn't why didn't anyone sign up for the African-American community and students began with well don't know anybody who's African-American or don't have any black friends but we quickly realized that not everyone was interviewing someone they knew as we talked talked about this further we realized that there was lot of fear how can as white person go up to somebody black and ask them to talk to me about race it felt presumptuous and we were afraid of being judged it also occurred to me that for some of my students this might have been the first time that they really had to identify as white and it was in way that made them feel uncomfortable so as faculty member who doesn't like to ask her students to take risks she herself won't take said okay well will sign up and approached the president of the black student organization and asked if could attend general meeting and do group interview was thinking variety of voices would be interesting instead of one representative voice so he said he would ask and he found out and he got back to me and was invited to one of their General meetings and we had an hour and half of very rich conversation this was not the first time that interviewing as practice had taken me outside my comfort zone but it was the first time that began to realize interviewing as practice could help me expand my comfort zone not that any particular relationship on that night extended beyond the length of the meeting but in sharing their stories with me and in trusting their experiences to me the students shaped me and prepared me for future relationships that might might have otherwise missed jumping ahead 10 years it's 2016 and I'm co-directing the project the welcome project with Liz WL associate professor of art here at Valpo this is an ongoing digital Story collection it started here on campus with questions around belonging and not belonging but recently we've expanded to make it Northwest Indiana cross count Story collection and in these last seven years have participated in over 100 interviews and I've heard so many stories experiences of living with deadly allergy and how do you navigate workplace experiences with growing up in Deaf culture with choosing the hijab or not choosing the hijab with coming out to family to friends with being bullied by peers with just feeling awkward and not normal with having to experience homelessness for the first time with growing up on welfare with moving to valarezo from Kazakhstan or Kurdistan or China from Arkansas or New York or Gary and all of these stories have changed me and don't just mean my values and beliefs though these two have also been expanded or challenged or confirmed but mean something more fundamentally me I'm more Curious than I've ever been want to know about experiences that won't or can't have have courage now to go to places where know I'm going to feel uncomfortable so how does this happen I've been talking to you about interviewing as practice and in the welcome project it is our method of Story collection but it's not the power that transforms that's listening so when think of interviewing think of professional situation think of an expert who's entering in to gather facts and information who will attempt to remain objective the posture for me is somebody leaning forward microphone in hand maybe even poking or prodding listening on the other hand to me feels very receptive Open Arms back chest exposed there's sense of vulnerability that comes with listening and in all of my interview experiences with the welcome project it is that vulnerability that has made the interview and the listening process work so I'm vulnerable in the sense that expose my ignorance in the way in which listen to someone's story from their Center of authority on their own terms even if at times those terms bring up my own biases or assumptions or judgments the vulnerability that comes with catching myself having the those assumptions and needing to turn them into questions the vulnerability that comes with allowing that this person's story this person before me will change me in ways that can't control so an example my first welcome project interview was with student from the south side of Chicago African-American female and she was telling me about growing up in her neighborhood and what typical day like was with her family and as listen to her talk realiz realized that in some ways her story confirmed what had been told about living in the southside of Chicago by media and other sources but in other ways her story interrupted that representation that description it challenged it it said things that they hadn't that representation had never even presented at all and as realized that also realized had this assumption that no one would ever want to grow up in neighborhood on the outside of Chicago no one would ever want to grow up in housing project and so catching myself in that assumption was able then to present it to Storyteller as question and she could tell me further about what from her neighborhood she was proud of what formative experiences she had with her family with her neighbors with her church formative experiences that she wouldn't trade for anything in the world even the difficult challenging circumstances which she did did hope to change about her neighborhood and this happened to me time and time and time again in interviews the individuals telling me about their circumstances disrupted the biases or assumptions had about what those circumstances must be like as they presented to me what it was like to live on the ground and in time began to trust this listening process that this whole cycle would happen and that gave me the courage to go to places wouldn't normally have gone because knew there were stories waiting one of those places is Gary Indiana it used to be place that would drive by on my way to Chicago and now because of the flight paths cross collect Cross County collection that the welcome project is doing it is city of neighborhoods wests Side East Side Midtown Etna Miller Glenn Park talliston and so many more it used to be city with reputation and now it's the city of the cat Regional archives and Indiana University Northwest and mayor Karen Freeman Wilson in City Hall place of abandoned lots and boarded up houses yes but also of storefront churches and black lives matter Northwest Indiana Gary and Miller Beach arts and creative district and St John's Lutheran Church and Temple Israel and the national lak Shore and it isn't that don't go into Gary without trepidation now especially if at times know will be the only person who's white this has been process for me it has required baby steps each interview its own baby step and there are still places that am finding the courage to go but now for me those places are the rural neighborhoods of Northwest Indiana the farms and grain elevators the homes that have trump sign in the yard or Confederate flag flying or whose owners might be card carrying members of the NRA these places are as strange and unfamiliar to me as the all black neighborhoods of once were and will go to these places because there are stories waiting for me and will also go because in addition to our practice of interviewing we at the welcome project have facility itation practice that we created with the center for civic reflection in which we take one of the stories from our website and we share it with group of people who were not present at the initial interview and we ask them what do you hear this Storyteller wanting you to know what is it that they care about and need you to hear and then we ask them to interpret that in light of their own experience and to think about the implications of that for our life together in community Northwest Indiana like every region has history complicated history the clan has had roots in Porter County Gary in Lake county is the first city of its size to have had black mayor and white flight started in part as reaction to that election and continued as people were drawn out to the suburbs and the mill started to lay people off and our stories in the region of who stayed and who left why we stayed why we left and what happened to our neighborhoods in light of that are very close to us they're very personal stories and they're sometimes very raw and at the welcome project we want to bring those stories back out into the public into common space where we can talk about what they mean for us today and how they might instruct us to be good neighbors and if we can dare to listen in this way if we can dare to listen together then we might not be able to see all the changes we want to see in our cities our neighborhoods and our communities but we will start to see the change we want to see in ourselves and that will lay the foundation for the work at hand thank you