Lynchburg moves toward action

This video captures footage and interviews from participants at the Lynchburg Community Dialogue on Race & Racism Action Forum and Youth Dialogue. The three-day Action Forum was open to all and held in a vacant department store where participants could come and go as they were available. 

The attendees had an opportunity to view and vote on the top two ideas from the recently completed 58 Study Circles. Activities included mini-study circle experiences, video taping of personal stories, viewing of all of the ideas from the Study Circles, and an opportunity to make a personal commitment to individual and/or group action related to reducing racism within our community. The votes from the action forum were then tallied and reported out to the community with the next steps.

The Youth Dialogue was a one-and-a-half day event where teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 had an opportunity to participate in honest and open dialogue around the issues of Race & Racism. The top ideas from the Youth Dialogue were also on display during the Action Forum for participants to vote and view.

The Action Forum was an energetic, community-wide event that brought together study circle participants, program volunteers, and the community-at-large to celebrate and support the work of the study circles.  The Action Forum represented a significant step on our journey from recognition of a problem to dialogue to action to change.

Leslie King is assistant coordinator of the Lynchburg Community Dialogue on Race & Racism. Click here to visit the program's website and learn more about what's happening in Lynchburg.

Comments

[Amy Malick]

Thanks for posting, Leslie. Your action forum is one of the most unique I've heard about. Congratulations! What are some of the ways your program is supporting the action? See you in Denver soon at our national meeting!

[Julie Fanselow]

Leslie, thanks so much for posting this. I have a few questions about your action forum process (which, as Amy noted above, is a really unique one).

I know that many communities hold their action forums on one evening, not spread out over several days. Aside from the idea of allowing people to drop by at their own convenience, were there any other reasons you decided to have a multiday forum?

How many people participated in the circles, and how many of them showed up for the action forum?

There are scenes of people at computers. Is that how people voted on their favorite action items?

Was the commitment wall meant to help people immediately state an interest in a specific action item, or more general expressions of commitment to change (or both)?

Thanks again for sharing this. I noticed that you have posted the top 10 action ideas on your website, so I am linking to that here:

http://www.lynchburgva.gov/Index.aspx?page=4304

[Leslie King]

Amy,
One of the important lessons that we learned from our Pilot-Action Groups is that it’s not enough just to form groups and tell them to go and take action. In order to be effective, more support is needed. One strategy is a new advisory group that will guide and support action groups.

In addition, the City of Lynchburg is designating a full-time staff person to serve as a liaison. With the use of workshop material developed by Gwen Whiting, our Planning & Implementation Committee just successfully delivered four, two-day workshops to begin preparing action group members for the process of working together as teams. Activities included discussion and group work around team building, group dynamics, conflict style assessment and the many ways change occurs in a community.

We hope that our efforts of providing on-going support and building the capacity of each group will provide the optimum context for effective change.

[Leslie King]

1)Because of the large number of participants at our Pilot-Action Forum, we knew that we needed to find another space or format that would serve the same purpose as the Pilot-Action Forum without compromising the energy and process of having everyone together at the same time and place. We needed a venue that would accommodate at least 500 to 1000 people and allow participants to view each idea, ask questions and vote. Unfortunately, we did not have a location that met those needs, so we decided to have a charrette style forum over the course of three days where participants could come during the evening or day and view and vote on all the ideas. Study Circle participants were asked to commit to scheduled times to represent the top-two ideas that were generated in their group to answer any questions attendees might have.

2)While we had about 750 people register for Study Circles, about 600 actually followed through and attended most of the sessions. Over 550 people attended the Action Forum and the majority of them were study circle participants.

3)Yes, we used lap-top computers to collect and tally the votes. We felt this was the fastest and easiest method to collect and tally such a large number of votes. To help those that were not as familiar with computers, each attendee was also given a handout of all the ideas formatted the same way they would see the computerized ballot.

4)The purpose of the commitment wall was to give participants an opportunity to express how they are individually committing to change. We wanted to recognize that individual change is as equally important as other forms of group or institutional change. We also wanted to get immediate feedback as to what kinds of change had occurred.

[Leslie King]

Have a good weekend!

[Julie Fanselow]

Leslie, thanks for coming back to tell us more. We look forward to more good news and inspired action from Lynchburg.

[Julie Fanselow]

P.S. Computerized voting seems MUCH more efficient than "sticky dots."

And you're right: With such a large number of participants, it would be very difficult to have a one-session action forum, never mind find a place big enough to do it.

I'd be interested to hear from other communities about how they've designed action forums to best meet their local needs.

[Margaret Schmitt]

Lynchburg received terrific support from our Information Technology folks. In addition to the convenience of automated counting, a reason for using the computerized voting was to minimize the potential group think effect of visible "dots" on some ideas.

[Julie Fanselow]

Very interesting. Thanks, Margaret. You obviously have some very capable video technology staff, too.