 and welcome to Discovery, Knight Foundation's weekly program on the arts. I'm Priya Sarkar, Director of Arts at the Foundation, and today we'll be discussing community engagement in service of a more equitable future. Thank you for joining us. Our guest today is Joy Bailey Bryant, Vice President and Managing Director at the Cultural Planning Firm, Lord Cultural Resources. Born in Atlanta and based in New York, Joy has worked all over the world with civic leaders, arts and cultural organizations, artists, architects, designers, planners, and residents to bring people and culture together. Joy has worked in cities where Knight Foundation funds as well, including Detroit and most recently Macon, Georgia, where she led development of the recently completed Macon Cultural Plan. She's a national expert on community engagement and the person who taught me about meeting people where they are. Joy, so wonderful to have you with us. Thank you for joining us. Joy, I think you're on me. I got it every time. Thank you so much for joining me, Priya, and for having me on. I'm excited about our conversation and hope we can keep it to the amount of time. Thirty minutes doesn't seem like enough. I agree. It's a big topic and you and I can always talk for hours, so we'll do our best. I just want to let viewers know that we will have a brief Q&A at the end, and you can submit your questions anytime during this conversation in Zoom, in the chat, or in the Q&A function, or in the comments if you're watching on Facebook Live. And our my colleagues at Knight Foundation will share those questions with me, and we'll do our best to work some in toward the end. So, Joy, community engagement has been a hot topic and especially hot topic, I should say, for many of us recently, not only in arts and culture. So, let's get right to it. What does it mean to meet people where they are? Well, you know, Priya, it's great to start with that as the beginning. And meeting people where they are is a physical idea, as well as a mental idea. Physically, meeting people where they are means, you know, everybody doesn't have time to pitch up for two hours on a Wednesday evening to talk about their needs pertaining to culture or pertaining to, you know, their parks or pertaining to the library. But it doesn't mean they don't care about those things. It really means they just don't have the time. Instead, they're getting ready, getting dinner ready. They are getting homework done, they're doing all of these different things. So, how can we as planners, as people who say that we want to engage with the public, really meet those people who want to, in their hearts, engage with us? How can we meet them physically and mentally in those spaces? So, physically, we can go to where they are going. If you want to speak to people who have, you know, who have children or if you want to speak to people who have a particular need, go to that agency that they use. Go to the Board of Education meetings. Go to the PTA. Go to the various, the library meetings that are happening, the genealogical society. All of those different things that are people and organizations that are already meeting. Put yourself on that agenda. That's a physical. In the mental space, when you're really thinking about what engaging with people on a mental level, just ensuring that you are getting to them, that you are making it clear to them that they are the most important people in this conversation, not you. Community engagement has this kind of the start with this governmental model. I know this is the longest answer to your one question, but it has a governmental model start. If you can think about the Park Service always had to have a public meeting to pass the plans that were already put into place or already had been put together. So, essentially, you were meeting at one evening to rubber stamp these plans and saying, okay, this is what's going to happen. Really meeting people in a space where you're starting the conversation with them. So, it's not at the end of the process. It's at the beginning. It's during, and it is at the end, and then it goes on and on and on and on. So, meeting people where they are is really something that you have to think about and work to achieve. That's great. That's helpful to think about, Joy. So, I want to touch on one thing that you mentioned, maybe the history of community engagement practice came from this model of rubber stamping. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that. I know a lot of different terms are often used in conversation about community engagement. Buy-in is one. Investment is another. Can you talk a bit about maybe what you see as best practice or just the best philosophy? Yes. Yes. Well, real community engagement. Priya, you and I talk about this and really worked at this for years, but real community engagement starts a conversation. That conversation, honestly, sometimes is the deliverable, right? So, and that's an important piece to understand, because as opposed to that model that I cited where you were trying to get a rubber stamp on a plan that was, and now we're ending the process. If we're talking about real community engagement, we're allowing people to start this conversation that you want to allow them to have kind of a spectrum of entry, I think. The first is kind of a basic piece, right? This is best practices in your thinking of how to engage a process, a community engagement process. The best start is a basic need that people have to be heard. When we talk about a lot of these fraught topics, I started really working with projects in, for instance, the Albany Civil Rights Institute in Albany, Georgia. That is in southwest Georgia. And when I started to work with that group in the early 2000s, at that point in time, many of those people had never been able to tell the stories and experiences that they had had in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, you know, leading up to the Civil Rights Era, in the midst of the Civil Rights Era. And these were elders and people who just wanted to be heard. And they just wanted to get their point out. And as long as they were able to be heard, that was actually enough. And that is, that's one thing because they had, yes, they had stories to tell and we wanted to capture those. There was also a significant amount of anger that they themselves needed to let go of. And as a part of that, being heard was truly important. So the first point I would say is allowing people to be heard. You know, we have a need to control the conversation. Sometimes it's okay if you just allow people to be heard. You know, you hold that microphone, but you let people get it out. That's the first, that's the first thing. Be comfortable with that. Be comfort in that discomfort. The second group of people is the kind that most of us are comfortable with. Those are the people who are coming to hear the conversation. They're coming to share a little bit. They're coming to be informed. You know, they're the people who are, you know, as I said, we're the ones that we're most comfortable with because they're going to participate a little bit, but they're not the people who are, you know, just like steep in the whole situation, right? So those are the middle ground people. The third, the most involved, I would definitely say, are the people that you're looking and organizations and groups that you're really looking to form that shared vision with. And that's where you want to get to that space of, and they are looking for a shared vision. And you're going to be going, coming back and forth and really moving forward in an engaged, ongoing conversation that begins, continues, does not have an end, and continues beyond, you know, whatever it is that you want to see happen. So in the best practices, I think it's really understanding that spectrum, respecting that spectrum, and appreciating that spectrum. And I would even, if I could go into, there's some logistical, easy kind of logistical things that we do. Please do. This is news you can use for the folks at home. So please go. Yes. Yes, tools you can use. So one of the things that we talk about is inclusive engagement. And people are, what's inclusive? How do I know? How do I define? Well, you know, the census helps us, right? So they give us, they give us this American Community Survey. They give us, you know, your Economic Development Department of the Cities and Counties that you live in. They give you the demographics of your, of your space. You can go into depth about, you know, who and how many, what ages. And when you're designing your process, use that information and gather that information at all of your conversations, allow people to fill out to their comfort level, a demographic survey, so that you can understand who you are engaging. And once you have that information, hold yourself up to it. Look at your census numbers and exceed that, right? So if you're looking at populations that are majority minority populations, you want to make sure that your conversations, your surveys, whatever those are that you're actually engaging with groups that look like the communities that you're, you're trying to serve. And if it doesn't look like that, and I'm going to tell you in your first conversations, Priya, you know this, you know, it's not, it's just not because the people who have the time to initially engage do not, do not normally, you know, look like the, the exactly like the populations of, of some of our cities. So that's when you start to design even further into your process. You're looking at who, where do I need to go to gain those audiences? You know, different accessibilities of different ethnicities, different ages. And whatever that demographic is, going after them with the pursuit and determination that makes, that where you are really engaging with the broad spectrum of your community. So that's one of the kind of like ways to really get into it. Thank you. That's great. And I want to just follow up that was a lot in there that I'd like to follow up on. One of them is, you know, you talked a bit about sort of different categories or sort of profiles of folks in the community who might, you know, participate in an engagement process, especially if, if, you know, reached out to. And I guess I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how to, how to design a way to, to sort of have space and opportunities for all those different folk types of people and their sort of personalities and proclivities to, to feel like they can be part of a process, you know, I'm thinking a bit about earlier, earlier this week on our sister program from Knight Foundation coast to coast. My colleagues hosted architect Walter Hood and public space fellow, Knight Public Spaces fellow, and he talked about how he's not necessarily looking for, you know, common, common ideas, but he's looking for different perspectives to be able to exist in, in a, in a space, I guess, you know, and I think about the work that you do and so much of that is planning toward a shared vision, but how, how do you think about how to make people feel welcome or like they can participate and then, you know, that various viewpoints can still exist in some kind of shared vision or plan. I think that's, that's really, I think really clear that's getting back to that idea of ensuring that people know that they are heard. That's that, that first piece of, you know, hearing people, no matter what, you know, in the conversation, there's always that space where someone just kind of says things and you're like, okay, that's interesting. And, and you're, and you're thinking, okay, where does that go, but if you allow for that voice to be heard, what's great in my opinion about conversations is that, you know, we always have this, we actually have this activity, one activity that we do, which is called and, at least both and, right, so it's okay, and, okay, and, and it allows for people to, you know, whatever they say, it's just kind of building upon and building upon and building upon. So this, this idea that what you're, what you're putting into the atmosphere has importance and it, and it starts to, it starts to help people to see other points of view. It starts to, instead of just kind of shutting down ideas all, all together and understanding that we're not all trying to, you know, hold hands and seeing kumbaya, what we are building a container that allows for this, this broader perspective, perspective, you know, a broader spectrum of understanding. And this is where that idea that I said earlier of the conversation is the deliverable, where it really does start to, to make some sense, because that is, you know, I remember early on, the first time the, the, the White House had an office of public engagement was in, in, in 2008, and that was huge. That was, it, it was a huge thing to actually have an, an, an official federal office of public engagement. And it was, their deliverable was a conversation. It was not around the plan. It was around, you know, a continual series of conversations to get us all to ensure that we are all heard. And then, you know, in, in, in create that container for the shared vision. So that strikes me as especially relevant in terms of the current context, what's happening this spring and summer in terms of we're in a pandemic. It's, it's affecting the entire country and much of the world. But it's also being felt differently in different communities. The impacts of it and how different people are experiencing it is different based on what community you're living in and also personally. And then meanwhile, we have an intensification this summer of the racial justice movement and, and conversations about equity. I guess, you know, in thinking about these as two, at least two major national conversations that are taking place on a local level, that's where a lot of these conversations are playing out locally. How, how do you, how do you think about, you know, how do you think about having a national conversation locally? And, and the role of community engagement in that. And I think, too, something you mentioned about sitting, being comfortable with discomfort, it seems like something that so many of us are increasingly needing to do. And you've worked in a lot of communities and a lot of projects on sensitive topics specifically, difficult topics, sites that have very complicated histories, anything you can share in your experience that we might keep in mind as we go through these conversations. Yeah, I mean, you know, we talk about this so much that COVID and well, COVID to start really just brought to light issues that were already present. Then the the social uprisings across the country really just honed in on the fact that we had not acknowledged so many of the issues that were present right in front of our things, right? We hadn't had the truth and reconciliation commissions that so many, you know, that that Canada had, Canada has had, that South Africa has had. Yeah, at least the start, the acknowledgement of, you know, that that these things actually happen and having conversations about those on a really national level, right? And then breaking that down and bringing that into the local spaces and homes. And instead, it has been left to organizations like, you know, the smaller, you know, African American museums, for instance, or different cultural types, the types of spaces, you know, in Macon, we started that plan a year ago. It actually was completed and we're launching it, but it was completed in January. We had the priorities in January. And equity is the wrapping, we have what's called a power pyramid of five priorities for the city. And equity is the priority that wraps around the entire plan. And that was that was in January, before COVID, certainly before the social uprising started, but it was not before everything that had has, you know, was causing it happen. So the making cultural plan, for instance, because of COVID, and because of the social uprising, it really that process, it built a muscle for that arts and cultural community to respond to COVID that because of the cultural plan, they are now going up our field, but I'm going to tell you this because it's important. But because of the cultural plan, they actually had an arts and cultural a list of the arts and cultural organizations, the individual artists, the the the programs and work that was being done across the city, all of that, which was not present before they had gone through the process. Now they had that, they also had a plan that said, how can we respond to these inequitable issues that we see across our city. And now that everything is jumping off with COVID, and with the uprisings, and with everything that's happening, what are we going to do? They had they had a plan, they had like, you know, priorities, task strategy, task, they hadn't already identified. And that that was because they really recognized early and had planned for that. So so I went far field to tell you about the ways that the ways that that that that the real COVID and the uprisings just were exacerbating things that had that had already that were already present. And then just coming back around to this to this idea of acknowledging those issues, because within that plan, there was that acknowledgement. And therefore, we had something to do, we knew how to respond. If you don't talk about it, there's no way you can build a response. Right? It's impossible. There's something else to that I'm hearing and what you're saying, which is which is that laying of the groundwork in terms of the work that had happened in that planning process. And I think it actually what you said, Joy relates really well to one of the questions is probably a great time to kind of start bringing in some of the questions from viewers. So one is from Jose. What's the responsibility of planning and civic departments to do that work the deep dive digging? I mean, I think I think it is. I think that planners in my experience of planners, you know, we're members of APA and really enjoy that work. I think it's it is implicit in what you do. As as planners, we are able to really see that that demographic research, we're able to see the effects and understand understand what's happening in our cities. But we need to be looking at the root causes of that and who tells us what those root causes are, other than the people who are experiencing this. How do you identify the people who are experiencing this? You need to do the deep dive digging into those communities. So identifying who they are and then going to them. Yeah, that's really helpful. And I think a follow up question is one is about given especially right now, you know, you talked about meeting people where they are physically and mentally and physically is kind of challenged in some ways during pandemic related or gathering restrictions. Do you have any suggestions for ways that folks can do this when you know when we have these kind of limitations right now? So I will I will be really transparent in that the first the first part of my answer is going to be somewhere that I feel we've had an amazing amount of success in the last four months. The second part of my answer is still a question for me. The first part is right here in this forum because we are all now in this space where we have access to everyone. We have access to, you know, a world of people who go to their community board meetings on on this, you know, in this format whatever the format is, it could be big blue button zoom go to meeting who cares Microsoft Teams, whatever it is, we can go to those meetings. So we can contact people we can get to them. And I will say one of the things that we were told the other day I did a community board meeting the other day and one person said well it was kind of nice to talk to something other than reopening. So that was it was a it was a nice conversation. So that has been heartening in that we can still do that. People are still and people even more are yearning to connect with one another. And so as a result they are more likely to get on to these formats. We are having more access to people who are older people who might not have come out of their homes before because we are doing this in our homes or in this in this format. We do have access to differently able people for instance. It's providing a lot more access to people who be in a physical sense we might not have been able to engage with as well. The second part of my answer is the digital divide. The digital divide is real. And you know there's only so much that you can do with with a phone or without Wi-Fi enabling. And a lot of people got their Wi-Fi from libraries and libraries are closed. You know and a lot of places are not in more rural areas do not have the bandwidth for instance to do a conversation like this. So that is challenging and that is something that we are still trying to address in these last few months the ways that we can get to different people. We have had really courageous and wonderful people who we've been you know working with clients of ours who are doing surveys and you know door to door and partnering with meals on wheels and those types of organizations that are still going out who can you know get to people and and they're they're willing to do that effort and that work. So that's that's one way it's definitely not a total solution but we are working to figure that part out. Thank you. Another question comes from Charles. This is about how to balance potential sometimes attention between community vision and community desires and say the artist's vision. And you know that of course I just want to acknowledge too that community engagement isn't just about planning processes but certainly about design processes and that there are so many artists doing great community engaged art and and and they have their own best practices on how they do that. But from your experience Joy how do you see the way to balance that tension if it exists? So artists you know artist vision is amazing and it's essentially why you engage with artists in any point in time for any any type of especially public art piece whether it's you know a visual arts piece or performance it's it's always the artistic vision is that thing that you are you are investing in yourself your your time your money all those different things. And in community engaged artists that's actually part of the charm that's the give and take the push and pull that that work that the community engaged artist is is is doing to be truly responsive to the community that they're working with and and going back to like I hope that if if there's anything you take away from this that real community engagement is is is the the conversation is the deliverable so that's the case even with the artistic vision right that it is an ongoing conversation with the artist and with the community and you'll find with so many pieces you know the aster gates of dust pieces that where they're still like responses the community is still able to build responses throughout the process. There are so many artists who in their practice they're building in those opportunities for artists or for the community to continue to change the work as as it grows as time goes by so that it's not this stagnant piece instead it it has the almost like the we always you know the antiques roadshow patina piece you know it grows over time so the community is part of that response. That's great and that reminds me of something that you said when we were chatting you know preliminarily which was the idea of ownership and kind of that you know you talked to the beginning of the of the show about that engagement goes on and on and on and on and and and I wonder if you could just briefly talk a bit about that idea of ownership. Yeah this is the the idea is that it's yet again that kind of shared ownership the community the community and and the artist the the planner and the and the community that this is not a piece that I have finished and I'm walking away that this is a piece that it's I'll tell you this when we talk about community engagement it's it's a way to under it's a way to begin your social impact right you're thinking about your social identify what you will do what you want to do what you need to do to to get to some kind of impact it's the way that you'll do it community engagement is and then it's the way that you will assess the impact of that right so in that in that space of getting to ownership because you're because you're looking at and driving towards social impact and it is that that's I think that's how you get to it if I'm being clear there. Yeah and yeah I think so and I feel like what I'm taking from that too is that through because time goes on and it's a long-term commitment and not an acute sort of engagement that ownership that's fostered leads to stewardship and I think this comes up not only in a planning process that you're then needing to implement you right the plan is the beginning of what you're going to do as a community but it's true for public space it's true for you know all kinds of things so and if you continue the conversation you'll always have ownership like you'll always have you know instead of just getting buy-in for this one moment if you're going to continue that we're always going to have and I as a community member am always going to feel ownership over this because I'm continuing you know there's I'm a part of a continued conversation yeah it's always it's like it's always mine you know which is great yes which is important because then you have new people coming exactly coming in yeah and regenerating and you don't you're not old you're not it's it's not a oh my god I gotta get rid of that I gotta change the name of that I gotta it's always growing and changing because the community is a part of that joy as usual this has not been enough time we're pretty much out of time I want to ask you and I want to thank folks for sending in their great questions and I'm sorry we didn't get to all of the wonderful questions I want to ask you before we completely wrap up what what do you see as being the opportunity in this moment what are what are you inspired by or hopeful but for I am so inspired by the simple fact that we have to emerge from COVID from the social uprising as a changed world a changed no matter what city you live in your local space has got to be different than it was before because it's it's all it's all broken up you know it's all broken down now and we have to build up a new and we have an opportunity and a model to build up that no not a model we have an opportunity to build and create a new model and that is and create that shared vision together by this you know when you when there's a breaking down there always has to be a building up so the opportunity in this moment is for us to emerge as a right society right so so we know what the problems were let's correct the problems and let's be better let's not rebuild let's build a new and and be just totally um obviously through conversation just really build that space that's inclusive for all and build those systems that are inclusive for all and and a framework that works across all of our perspectives that's diverse equitable inclusive accessible all of the words that we need to include let's let's make that happen that's the great opportunity here thanks joy for that call to action um i'm it reminds me of a fabulous quote i just heard yesterday that i know we were talking about um if my colleagues would share that please i want to thank uh donna walker cune um for um whom i saw give a fabulous presentation yesterday along with my friend gary padmore as part of link and center activates and donna shared this recent quote from uh indian writer arun tathi roy um which i hope i'm not going to read to you i hope you all can can see the quote there i just i loved this quote from roy in a writing she published early during the pandemic that um donna shared as an exhortation to be pioneers for a better world so joy thank you so much so very much for sharing your insights uh for for giving us tools uh that we can use to do just that um you can learn more about joy and her work at lord cultural resources at www.lord.ca and on the topic of public spaces and inclusiveness uh want to mention that joy will be co-hosting a conversation with the garden conservancy next thursday july 30th at 2 p.m eastern on the topic of gardens for a changing world inclusive gardens in unconventional spaces and we'll put the link in the chat uh where you can and on facebook uh where you can register for that talk um and you can also find more information on future discovery episodes on our website um please join us again in two weeks on friday august 7th when my colleague chris bar will be joined by paul farber and karen olivier to discuss reimagining monuments through stories of social justice and equity uh joy thank you again it's been such a pleasure as i always say you weren't named joy for nothing uh i can't wait for our next conversation yeah and um i want to want to also acknowledge so my colleague chris bar uh composed our intro music our exit music is by akron jazz artist theron brown until next time we wish you all good health safety and joy in art thank you and take care bye bye thank you