There is a growing movement to promote dialogue and meaningful conversations to help us find solutions to some of our biggest problems. Please explore the resources below to delve deeper into this fascniating topic. These ideas can help you in your personal and professional life.

• Dialogue: A Proposal:
  An article defining and expanding the process of Dialogue by David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett. " Dialogue, as we are choosing to use the word, is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes..."

• The World Cafe:
  World Café Conversations are an intentional way to create a living network of conversation around questions that matter. A Café Conversation is a creative process for leading collaborative dialogue, sharing knowledge and creating possibilities for action in groups of all sizes.

• National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation:
  NCDD brings together people and groups who actively practice, promote and study inclusive, high-quality conversations. Collectively, they seek to nurture justice, respect, and democracy throughout society using dialogue, deliberation and other forms of collaborative communication. Elevating the quality of thinking and communication in organizations and among citizens is key to solving humanity's most pressing problems.

• Centre for World Dialogue:
  Established in 1995, the Cyprus-based Centre for World Dialogue is an international NGO that exists to promote greater understanding between the peoples of the world. The Centre has hosted conferences, seminars and meetings in Cyprus and elsewhere on issues of international concern and publishes a quarterly journal called Global Dialogue, which promotes the exchange of ideas on a broad range of international issues.

• Collective Wisdom Initiative:
  The Collective Wisdom Initiative (CWI) helps make visible an emerging field of collective wisdom, its study and practice. Through its website, commissioned papers, network of active practitioners and continuing research, CWI seeks to articulate key concepts, highlight developing practices and effective group processes, document lived experience and provoke an on-going inquiry in this field as it emerges.

• Compassionate Listening Project:
  The Compassionate Listening Project is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering individuals to heal polarization and build bridges between people, communities, and nations in conflict. The Compassionate Listening Project teaches powerful skills for peacemaking in families, communities, on the job, and in social change work locally and globally. Their curriculum grew out of our many years of reconciliation work on the ground in Israel and Palestine. They adapted their trainings and began to teach in the U.S. in 1999, and now offer trainings and workshops worldwide for everyday peace-building.

• Comprehensive Dialogue Among Civilizations:
  CDAC was founded in 2003 by Dr. Vladimir F. Petrovsky, former UN Under Secretary-General and Director-General of the UN Office in Geneva (1992 -2002) as a follow up to the United Nations International Year for the Dialogue of Civilizations in 2001. The current world situation more than ever demands the development and strengthening of dialogue. CDAC aims to develop, cultivate and promote the spirit and culture of dialogue with the ultimate goal of creating tools and instruments to address the current global issues and challenges in a constructive, evolutionary and democratic way.

• Conversation Café:
  Vicki Robin, a pioneer in the voluntary simplicity movement, came up with the idea of using the 'conversation café' model in attempts to take her ideas of simpler living to a higher level. Her organization has more than 60 trained café hosts and has spread internationally after a tremendous start in Seattle.

• Corporation for Positive Change:
  The Corporation for Positive Change (CPC) is dedicated to the design and development of appreciative organizations - those capable of sustaining innovation, financial well-being and market leadership by inspiring the best in human beings. Our workshops are led by CPC principals and offered through the Taos Institute. CPC offers workshops in Appreciative Inquiry foundations, Appreciative Inquiry leadership, and Appreciative Inquiry in Action.

• Dialogos, Inc.:
  Founded by William Isaacs, Dialogos promotes the spirit and practice of dialogue for strategic use at all levels of leadership within and across organizations. They work with client organizations to meet their business objectives by transforming taken-for-granted limits in ways of thinking and acting.

• Dialogue Circles:
  Dialogue Circles provides clients with the flexibility to hold online or traditional consultation and dialogue. According to Dialogue Circles, many of the most successful consultation and dialogue endeavors now involve a mix of online tools and traditional face-to-face approaches that complement one another. They call this mixed approach "intermodal consultation and dialogue."

• Future Search Network :
  The Future Search Network initiates future search conferences, innovative planning conferences used world-wide by hundreds of communities and organizations. The conferences meet two goals at the same time: helping large diverse groups discover values, purposes and projects they hold in common; and enabling people to create a desired future together and start implementing right away.

• Generative Dialogue Project:
  The Generative Dialogue Project emerged in late 2003 as part of the Global Leadership Initiative, a broad effort to address the need for more effective approaches to global problem solving. From the outset, our intention for the GDP has been to organize a community of experienced dialogue practitioners as a peer learning group to work together to advance the state of the art of dialogic problem solving and to promote the use of the most effective processes in the global arena.

• Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue:
  Simon Fraser University, which is located in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada), is the home of the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, an international conference centre providing 16,000 square feet of specialized meeting and function space which is devoted to facilitating public and private dialogue in order to foster understanding and engender positive action.

• National Civility Center:
  NCC's work is focused on distributing better tools for capacity building and helping individuals and institutions to be strong champions for improvement in their own communities. We believe that a comprehensive approach to community improvement - one that engages all local stakeholders around shared ideas and a unified plan for action - can help community members and organizations become more effective at solving tough social issues.

• Pioneers of Change:
  Pioneers of Change is a global learning network of young people, in their 20's and 30's, who have committed to be themselves, do what matters, start now, engage with others, and never stop asking questions. The "pioneers" include social entrepreneurs, corporate and NGO professionals, civil servants, artists, teachers, and free agents from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds. Founded in 1999, Pioneers of Change today engages over 2000 participants in over 70 countries.

• Public Conversations Project:
  In addition to their groundbreaking grassroots dialogue work, PCP provides trainings, presentations, and workshops on such things as the power of dialogue, inquiry as intervention, and the architecture of dialogue. PCP's website offers a variety of great tools and downloadable resources to help you organize and facilitate a dialogue.

• Robert Lederman Videos & Robert Lederman Essays:
  Robert Lederman is an artist who has been battling for public art and freedom of expression in New York City for years. You can read some of his insightful essays by visiting his Yahoo Group Web site.

• Society for Philosophical Inquiry:
  SPI is a grassroots nonprofit organization comprised of philosophical inquirers of all ages and walks of life who form 'communities of philosophical inquiry,' through Socrates Cafe. Cafes take place at coffee houses, libraries, hospices, senior centers, prisons, bookstores, homeless shelters, schools and more. SPI's diverse members are devoted to resuscitating the once time-honored art and skill of Socratic philosophical inquiry.

• Utne Magazine and the Café Utne:
  In 1991, the Utne Reader, an alternative press magazine (now Utne Magazine), led with an article on Salons, online and face-to-face forums which foster conversation, connection, engagement, and community involvement. The organization was bombarded with interest from readers to start salons and 10 years and 500 salons later, they continue to sponsor neighborhood face-to-face conversations, as well as online conversations.

Books

On Dialogue, by David Bohm, Peter M. Senge, Lee Nichol

On Dialogue is the most comprehensive documentation to date of best-selling author David Bohm's dialogical world view. Bohm explores the purpose, methods and meanings of the multi-faceted process he referred to simply as "dialogue", suggesting that dialogue offers the possibility of an entirely new order of communication and relationship with ourselves, our fellows, and the world around us.
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Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, by William B. Isaacs

William Isaacs - founder of the Dialogue Project at MIT - shows how problems between managers and employees, and between companies or divisions within a larger corporation, stem from an inability to conduct a successful dialogue. He demonstrates that dialogue is more than just the exchange of words, but rather the embrace of different points of view - literally the art of thinking together.
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World Cafe, by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Peter Senge (Afterword), Margaret J. Wheatley (Foreword by)

The World Café process has been used by tens of thousands of people around the world to tackle real-life issues. Based on seven key principles, it begins with small, intimate conversations at café-style tables; these gatherings then link and build on each other as people move between groups and cross-pollinate ideas. In this way, Café learning enables even very large groups to think together creatively in a single, connected conversation. This complete resource explains the Café concept and provides readers with the tools they need to get started.
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Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation, by Daniel Yankelovich

In this groundbreaking work, famed social scientist and world-famous public opinion expert Daniel Yankelovich reinvents the ancient art of dialogue. Successful managers have always known how to make decisions and mobilize coworkers. But as our businesses continue to expand, conversations and discussions just aren't enough to bring people and their different agendas together anymore. Dialogue, when properly practiced, will align people with a shared vision, and help them realize their full potential as individuals and as a team. Order from Amazon


The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore

Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.
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Dialogues in Public Art, by Tom Finkelpearl, Vito Acconci

By the 1990s, public art had evolved far beyond the lonely monument on an open plaza. Now public artists might design the entire plaza, create an event to alter the social dynamics of an urban environment, or help to reconstruct a neighborhood.
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Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, by Suzanne Lacy (Editor), Patricia Draher (Editor), Gail Smithwalter (Photographer)

Departing from the traditional definition of public art as sculpture in parks and plazas, new genre public art brings artists into direct engagement with audiences; definitive collection of writings on the subject.
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Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication (Educational Linguistics), by by Bela H. Banathy (Editor), Patrick M. Jenlink (Editor)

Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication offers a cross-disciplinary approach to examining dialogue as a communicative medium. Presented in five parts, the book takes the reader on a journey of exploring the power and potential of dialogue as a means for communication. In particular, this volume comes at a time when the global society's attention has been directed to creating more productive conversations in the name of world peace and harmony. It provides a unique new work on dialogue that brings the reader into a "dialogue with dialogue", offering an opportunity to understand the communicative potential of dialogue.
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