By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
As the landscape of our country changes to becoming more diverse, our language — or specifically the way we describe communities — also must be reframed to celebrate diversity and encourage community growth.
This is the lesson that more than 60 Grand Rapids leaders learned through a virtual conference with Trabian Shorters, the CEO and Founder of BMe. BMe is the international leader in the concept of asset-framing, where a community is not defined by their challenges but rather by the goals they wish to achieve.
“So instead of saying a student or community is ‘at-risk,’ we instead say the student is ‘motivated to overcome challenges to achieve’,” said Grand Rapids Public Museum Vice President of Marketing/Public Relations Kate Kocienski.
It was through Grand Rapids Public Museum President and CEO Dale Robertson’s connection with the non-partisan, non-profit think tank Michigan Future, Inc., that led to the October workshop, Kocienski said. Shorters originally was scheduled to come to the east side of the state in the spring and through a partnership with Grand Valley State University, Michigan Future, Inc., and the Skillman Foundation, the Public Museum was able to plan for him to stop in West Michigan. COVID changed those plans to the program being rescheduled in October as a virtual workshop, Kocienski said.
In his program, Shorters discussed the science behind negative cognitive thinking and how that impacts language. Learning about a community makes it less likely that a person will discuss that community in a negative aspect, according to previous recorded presentations by Shorters.
“The story you tell creates the life you live,” Shorters said during an Aspen Institute Talk in 2016. “The psychological research shows that people actually respond to preprogram scripts that are already running in their mind before it even happens.
“How you translate your missing purse into theft when there is no evidence in between that there was theft.”
The same could be said of a spider, Kocienski said.
“If you did your research and learned about what spiders do, you perhaps would become less afraid of them,” she said.
Or reframing how you see a museum as not only a place that hosts exhibits but also as a leader in engaging in community topics of diversity or equality.
“This fits our cultural programming and something that we feel is needed right now,” Kocienski said. “We felt that we needed to bring together the talent of West Michigan during a time when tensions are tense over race relations to talk about inclusion and equality in concrete ways.”
The ultimate goal, according to Kocienski, was to help start the conversation that goes beyond the traditional ideas of diversity and equity. For example, an organization that offers grants takes a look at the requirements of its grant process and the wording, she said, adding that instead of using “at-risk” using “motivated to succeed” or “help to overcome challenges.”
“Basically to remove the stigma and make it feel less negative,” she said.
Leaders from the area who attended the Oct. 8 event represented a variety of organizations including government, nonprofit, corporate and economic development entities.
