00:00:10 Cindy Holmes
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;39;15
Cindy Holmes
Welcome. I’m Cindy Holmes, and this is Around the Table, a podcast where we bring forward conversations about shared meals, dialogue, spirituality and social justice. Around the table is a research project and a podcast. In this podcast series, we share our conversations with community leaders from across Turtle Island who have organized intentional dinner dialogues to support community well-being and advance social justice, anti-racism and decolonization.
00;00;39;17 – 00;00;53;10
Cindy Holmes
Today’s episode is being recorded on the Unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the lək̓wəŋən and WSÁNEĆ Peoples.
00;00;53;13 – 00;01;22;18
Cindy Holmes
Welcome, everyone. On today’s episode of Around the Table. I continue the conversation about the People’s Supper with K Scarry, the director of partnerships with the Dinner Party Labs, where we explore more about the complex cities and transformative possibilities of dinner dialogues and the work that the People’s Supper is doing to cultivate spaces of healing and connection. K. is the director of Partnerships for the Dinner Party Labs.
00;01;22;20 – 00;02;02;06
Cindy Holmes
She works with communities to build trust and address rupture across lines of identity or ideological difference. Spearheading extensive collaborations with the Mayor’s office of New York City and Erie, Pennsylvania, the United Methodist Church, and dozens of other civic and faith communities. When she’s not at the Dinner Party Labs, she loves to build connection in her own neighborhood, hosting an open community meal in her home each week and owning a creative vending machine company where she vends locally made art as a way of elevating and supporting makers from her community.
00;02;02;08 – 00;02;09;22
Cindy Holmes
She writes at K E Scarry dot Substack dot com. Hi K, great to see you today. Welcome.
00;02;09;22 – 00;02;14;20
K. Scarry
Thank you so much. It’s so good to be here.
00;02;14;22 – 00;02;29;01
Cindy Holmes
We’re so glad to have you with us. Really looking forward to our conversation. K. Scarry is with the People’s Supper. And I’m wondering if maybe you want to start just by introducing yourself, telling us where you are today.
00;02;29;03 – 00;02;51;19
K. Scarry
Yeah, I’m happy to. So I’m K. Scarry. Like you said, I’m that director of the People’s Supper. I’m calling in from Northern Virginia right outside Washington, D.C., which is a place I grew up in and never planned to live in long term, but was drawn back in my adult years after leaving for college and have been here and love it and really value this community a lot.
00;02;51;19 – 00;03;04;00
K. Scarry
So I find that my national work of the People’s Supper is deeply kind of been at hand with my own thinking about what it means to be a good community member and a good neighbor in my own community of Herndon, Virginia.
00;03;04;02 – 00;03;20;05
Cindy Holmes
I’m really looking forward to hearing more about the work you’re doing with the People’s Supper. But before we go into that, I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about a time when you shared food with others around the table and you felt a sense of belonging?
00;03;20;07 – 00;03;40;20
K. Scarry
Yeah. Thank you for asking that. So many moments come to mind. I think there’s something about the kind of easing into a chair that makes me feel deeply at home and sitting around with other folks. One thing that comes to mind is a few years ago, my husband and I started an open community meal in our home on Tuesday nights and affectionately called Tuesday night dinner.
00;03;40;23 – 00;04;03;09
K. Scarry
And the thought is that anyone could come over for dinner and that there will be space for them. And it’s been interesting how we started that out of a conviction that people needed a place that they could belong. But it’s been such a space of real belonging for me. It hasn’t always been kind of my closest friends who come, but really strangers or friends of friends or people who just moved to the area who really just need space to be together.
00;04;03;09 – 00;04;21;13
K. Scarry
And yeah, there’s been something about that that has made it a real place that I feel just as welcomed as I feel like I am the person doing the welcoming at that particular table every week. And I feel like these are people who have gotten to know me and built relationships with me just as much as I’ve sought to build a relationship with them.
00;04;21;13 – 00;04;25;29
K. Scarry
And that’s probably one of the places I feel most formed and most at home.
00;04;26;02 – 00;04;53;12
Cindy Holmes
That’s such a beautiful example of everyday acts that we can participate in that sometimes, folks, I think, wonder, well, how might I organize a dinner dialogue or feel like it’s something that might be a large undertaking. But what you’ve described is something sort of everyday in your neighborhood, in your home with your partner that you’ve taken on. How do people find out about it?
00;04;53;12 – 00;04;56;03
Cindy Holmes
Is it through word of mouth or?
00;04;56;03 – 00;05;18;22
K. Scarry
A little bit. And I think we’ve kind of hacked like the mental game for our own selves in it– both in who we invite and how we invite them. So we just kind of tell anybody if we find out someone we know is moving to the area or coming back to the area because my husband also grew up in our town, we’ll just invite them and it’s easy to get nervous about,
00;05;18;24 – 00;05;43;29
K. Scarry
Are they going to think it’s weird that I’m telling them they can come over when we never really write? And so I tell everyone like it’s an open space and we invite whoever we know moves back. And that kind of cuts through the fear of it a little bit. But, you know, like I invite the barista at the coffee shop or one day I was journaling at a coffee shop and I overheard a woman talking about how her adult daughter had just moved to town and she was afraid she didn’t know how how to make friends.
00;05;43;29 – 00;06;03;07
K. Scarry
And so I introduced myself and told her her daughter could come over for dinner and she came for a year. So some of that and you know, the other hack for us is we tell people everyone’ll eat, we might not all the same thing. And so we try and fix enough food for whoever comes and inevitably more people come than we expect.
00;06;03;10 – 00;06;21;06
K. Scarry
And so if everyone’s eating pasta but we run out, then somebody’s going to eat to tomato soup and that’ll be fine. And so but we’ve tried to we’re really what matters to us is that people feel like they are welcome to come over and so the rest we’ll make work.
00;06;21;08 – 00;06;45;11
Cindy Holmes
It’s really a beautiful example. And we’ve talked about doing similar things in my family, but all of those sort of fears that come up about would we do it right. How would people feel? And I think what you’ve just really shared is that we can just break it down to a very simple level to just invite people and trust that there will be enough food and people can meet one another.
00;06;45;15 – 00;06;48;02
Cindy Holmes
it can be just what it is.
00;06;48;05 – 00;07;12;01
K. Scarry
Yeah, and I am a truly terrible cook. And so we tell people. So my husband mostly cooks, but if I’m responsible, I just tell people that we’ll order pizza, they hate it. I think something that matters to me so much about table spaces and meals together is the chance to really be human together. And so thinking about how we might create a space where there’s no pretense, there’s just the ability to show up however.
00;07;12;01 – 00;07;30;16
K. Scarry
And the regularity of that helps me not get intimidated. Like I don’t have to do the mental game every week of if I’m feeling up for it, I’m going to do it and we’re going to have people come over. And if 15 people come, we love having a full home and we love that and no one comes.
00;07;30;19 – 00;07;37;20
K. Scarry
My husband and I get a date night and we love that. And so it feels kind of like a win no matter what.
00;07;37;23 – 00;07;55;29
Cindy Holmes
It’s really great. I’m wondering, maybe we’ll move into talking a little bit about the work that you’re doing with the People’s Supper. You could start by just telling us the kinds of things you do at the People’s Supper, maybe a little bit about the purpose of the People’s supper generally, but then specifically the kinds of things you’re doing.
00;07;56;01 – 00;08;23;07
K. Scarry
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been with the People’s Supper for almost five years and started it similar. You know, I had been doing these Tuesday dinners. I saw the People’s Supper spring up as a really intending to bring folks together across lines of identity and ideological difference. And I had seen and really borne witness to the power of that in my own kitchen table and had learned a lot about how to navigate when things get hard or how to create a space where people could connect.
00;08;23;07 – 00;09;00;12
K. Scarry
And so I was longing for my own continued tools acquisition, if you will, and longing to kind of play with what this could look like in other communities. And so applied for the job. And I’ve been like, I’ve been there for five years. Our work has changed pretty significantly. When I started, we were kind of coming off of this campaign that was intended to be –it started as kind of 100 days, 100 dinners, let’s do 100 dinners all around the United States in the first hundred days of Trump’s presidency, so quickly grew to many more than 100 dinners in the first year of the People’s Supper.
00;09;00;12 – 00;09;20;04
K. Scarry
And I started in that second year, which is when we were starting to kind of play with the limits to a table, a one time gathering like that. And we’re starting to kind of explore how might the table be a space of resourcing, how might we teach people to do this work so that we don’t need to be in the room for them to continue gathering?
00;09;20;06 – 00;09;42;29
K. Scarry
And we were looking at how might this not just be a tool for people to connect with others that they might not otherwise meet in their neighborhoods, but how might we partner with communities to really explore together how bringing folks together over a meal and sharing of stories can be community change can work towards system change? How do those things go hand in hand?
00;09;43;02 – 00;10;02;18
K. Scarry
So I kind of arrived where we were starting to examine both the power of the table and the limits of a table and I think some of where we’ve shifted is in that we do a lot of community based work with communities all over the country, be it a faith community or a local government. And I would say that a few things that are happening at a people’s supper table.
00;10;02;20 – 00;10;23;17
K. Scarry
The first is the opportunity to kind of bear witness to one another’s stories. The second is an opportunity to examine your own story. So paying attention to what it is that you share about yourself or don’t, paying attention to kind of what questions we might ask feel really hard to access and why or why your story might look different than the stories of your neighbors.
00;10;23;20 – 00;10;48;00
K. Scarry
I think about it also as a place for practice. I often use this example, but one of my dearest childhood friends is a person of color and I’m a white person and I did not have a conversation with her about her experience as a black woman in our same school system until my mid-twenties. I carry a lot of shame about not having ever known that and not having ever known to ask.
00;10;48;00 – 00;11;12;01
K. Scarry
And so what I notice about myself is that I can get really caught in moments across lines of racial difference in that same fear about what am I not knowing, what am I not picking up on? And that’s kind of the telling of that old story. And so when that happens, I’m really quick to intellectualize, I’m really quick to over speak about books I’m reading and articles and so on.
00;11;12;03 – 00;11;35;16
K. Scarry
It feels really daunting to me to imagine interrupting that impulse forever and ever. What doesn’t feel daunting is to take an hour over tonight’s meal and just practice interrupting some of those impulses. How might the people’s supper table be a chance for us to practice interrupting our assumptions or leaning into discomfort or conflict in an hour that could be instructive for our life?
00;11;35;16 – 00;12;00;13
K. Scarry
beyond the table but isn’t as daunting as how can I just totally change my way of operating with one another? And so succinctly, the People’s Supper as a place for deep practice about relationship building with each other, a place for holding and bearing witness to one another’s stories, a place for examining your own. And then we think a lot about the people’s supper as we are often classified as a bridging organization.
00;12;00;13 – 00;12;11;26
K. Scarry
So bridging people across lines of difference, we think a lot about that. We’re not bridging for bridging’s sake, but that relationships are a foundation on which we can really do a community-wide change.
00;12;11;29 – 00;12;42;04
Cindy Holmes
Yeah, there’s so much in what you’ve shared that’s really resonating for me and my own work and what we’re really hoping to bring forward in this research project and in this podcast, It’s really struck by this piece about practice, and that’s how important it is that we continue to practice, to have humility, to recognize we make mistakes and we can repair and we can continue to learn through that process of interruption, interrupting assumptions.
00;12;42;07 – 00;13;12;14
Cindy Holmes
That’s really significant. And I think the piece about relationship building being such a central part of what is happening at the table is so important, but really not always easy. And I think you’ve really highlighted a lot of the areas of tension that come up around conflict assumptions and power relations at the table and how do we do, how do we gather and how do we build relationships that don’t further harm?
00;13;12;17 – 00;13;27;07
Cindy Holmes
I wonder if you can say any more about that piece, about what kinds of things help when we are faced with, I guess, conflict. What are some of the conditions that make it possible for us to move through that?
00;13;27;09 – 00;13;49;18
K. Scarry
Yeah, absolutely. I’m having a couple of reactions. You know, we’re doing a lot of work with the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, and I think it’s an interesting space. The People Supper is not faith based, and I am an ordained clergy person outside of the people’s supper work. And so I bring that lens to my work.
00;13;49;18 – 00;14;20;08
K. Scarry
And it’s interesting to work alongside faith communities, especially because I do think that there’s this default assumption that because we’re proximite to one another or we share space regularly, we have deep relationship. And I think that you’re right, it’s actually really hard. Doing deep relational work takes real tools. I also think that some of what we’re trying to do is constantly normalize all of the realities of a relationship and the fact that relationships are going to have tension and conflict in them.
00;14;20;10 – 00;14;55;12
K. Scarry
I say that because I think it’s really easy to get so panicked that there’s even conflict present that we can’t ever get to the conflict itself. And we think that the presence of conflict signals weakness in relationship or problem in relationship when it doesn’t. It’s just an invitation for us to dig in to a dynamic together. When I’m thinking about that at the People’s Supper, it’s a huge tension for us around how do we hold both a conviction that we believe people should have tables where they belong and places that they belong and harm reduction means not every table is for everyone.
00;14;55;15 – 00;15;18;27
K. Scarry
I think that’s a real misnomer in bridging spaces because it’s really common that people ask me questions like, How do I invite my most difficult racist uncle to this gathering? And a lot of times you don’t. And so before we even get to the table, there’s harm reduction work to be done and ways to prep the community that we’re gathering for the ability to move through conflict.
00;15;18;27 – 00;15;40;01
K. Scarry
I think about that and thinking who you invite and who you don’t. Having a real clear sense of what the work is we want to be able to do together, who’s going to be in the room and therefore who shouldn’t be in the room. So if I’m going to gather folks across racial lines, I’m going to make sure that everyone in the room, at a very bare minimum, believes that racism is real in the United States and it’s a present problem.
00;15;40;04 – 00;15;59;04
K. Scarry
And so if you can’t land, there, then a mixed race space or talking about racial equity is not a space for you, a all white space that’s really digging into the experience of whiteness might be because those comments aren’t going to land on the bodies of white folks in the same way they’re going to land on the bodies of people of color.
00;15;59;04 – 00;16;26;23
K. Scarry
And so thinking about some of that, I think we try really hard in our work alongside communities to start with a series of discernment questions about what’s gotten in the way before. So in a conversation across generational lines a couple of years ago with a church community as well, and they talked about, you know, the conversation would constantly get shut down because an older generation might use language that the younger generation didn’t deem acceptable and they would just call them out and that would be that.
00;16;26;25 – 00;16;46;28
K. Scarry
And so we realized that when we invited folks, we had to kind of give them a tool like, Hey, let’s level. We know this is a problem that’s happened before. It’s going to happen tonight if we don’t think strategically about how to move differently through it. So when you notice yourself bristle at the use of a word, why don’t you say, Hey, tell me what you mean by that.
00;16;47;01 – 00;17;07;00
K. Scarry
And then if you notice someone interrogating the word that you just used, why don’t we just commit to being a community that accompanies each other in figuring out shared language? And so there’s a way of kind of framing. We always offer a set of ground rules, ways of engaging with each other. A People’s supper, at its core.
00;17;07;00 – 00;17;28;05
K. Scarry
We also pick three questions to crack conversation open that are deeply anchored in stories sharing. And those questions are also intended to get us beyond the issue going into kind of our own experience. And so that means those are hard to argue with people’s experiences. The other thing I’ll say about it is the ground rules help us to not personalize.
00;17;28;05 – 00;17;50;03
K. Scarry
Like if I am a facilitator at a people’s supper conversation, then if someone says something that’s directly against a ground rule, I can kind of gently invite them back. It’s not a gotcha. It’s not a surprise. It’s a normalizing that when I’m anxious, when I’m being vulnerable, I might overshare. And so a ground rule is we’re going to all be mindful about how much we’re sharing so that other people can jump in.
00;17;50;04 – 00;18;10;04
K. Scarry
Things like that. And then the last thing I would say about it is we think a lot about calling people in and not out when a conflict arises. And so I would say there’s kind of three steps to do that in a dinner space. And this isn’t a perfect form by any means, but it’s usually at least a helpful starting place.
00;18;10;06 – 00;18;26;19
K. Scarry
I would say you start by kind of marking the moment in some ways that someone says something that’s really harmful. You mark it– I either start with how it landed on my own body. So I might say I noticed that when you said that my shoulders tensed, or that really made me bristle a little bit, can we stop for a second?
00;18;26;21 – 00;18;41;25
K. Scarry
Or I might kind of put it back to you and say something like, Hey, Cindy, I’ve experienced you as a person who really cares about their neighbor in this community, and I just want to stop you because that thing you just said, it hit me in a way. I’m not sure you know how it landed. And so that’s kind of step one.
00;18;41;25 – 00;19;13;20
K. Scarry
You want to mark it and not just move right past the moment. Second is to maybe elaborate where appropriate. So quick, here’s why that thing was hard. And the third thing, and I think this is really significant, is if we’ve framed our table conversations, which we do at the People supper as a deep accompaniment of each other, as a collective effort to make our communities stronger, healthier, more equitable, then I think the third piece of moving through a moment of real conflict or of real harm is to give everybody a collective way forward.
00;19;13;22 – 00;19;42;24
K. Scarry
That really helps because it doesn’t put a person on a spot. Not everybody in a moment where they feel like they’ve just something’s been illuminated for them can respond. They also don’t want to create a space in which everyone piles on them. And so just do like, hey, instead let’s try and use this word or let’s try not to assume that people could just pull themselves up by their bootstraps or whatever the thing is, trying to kind of then offer people a way forward in real time keeps the conversation in motion so that harm is addressed.
00;19;42;24 – 00;19;46;17
K. Scarry
And it’s also not something that totally derails the experience.
00;19;46;19 – 00;20;29;27
Cindy Holmes
These are also helpful and really speak to some of the important tools that we have to practice, as you said, and also what happens when we don’t have these kinds of tools and where things might go awry. And I wonder can you think about in terms of some of these challenges, can you think of any challenges that you’ve encountered when you’re facilitating around some of these same issues that maybe surprised you or moments where you saw people shifting, changing as well as maybe challenging times that weren’t easy to navigate?
00;20;29;29 – 00;20;54;26
K. Scarry
A couple of things come to mind. In our early days, there was a supper I actually wasn’t at this supper, but I was overseeing a series and this was one of the series. And there was a supper where we kind of gathered a group of LGBTQ folks from a particular neighborhood with some older folks in their community. They were mostly kind of in a retirement complex and wanted to be part of this series.
00;20;54;26 – 00;21;10;08
K. Scarry
And now we just hadn’t done the right prep work to make sure that people knew how to engage well, and that’s some of it. I mean, I think this is our early days. I think it was one of the gatherings that really taught us how much we needed to get sharper in prepping people to be able to show up.
00;21;10;08 – 00;21;31;04
K. Scarry
So there are facilitators who were misgendered in the conversation and people walked away feeling really unseen, which is the opposite of what we hoped was going to happen there. And so, yeah, thinking about again, what are the conditions by which people are invited and welcomed to show up and what do they need to know and how do we give them those tools or give people tools for when they don’t know?
00;21;31;08 – 00;21;51;18
K. Scarry
I think it’s also like you just said, it’s not a fair assumption that we’re going to get to a place where everyone’s going to have all the tools all the time. But there’s something even deeper than just the like I’m going to name to you the way this conflict made me bristle, but is the ability to even language in real time when we don’t know.
00;21;51;21 – 00;22;10;29
K. Scarry
I think about moments of conflict that have felt really daunting for me, and I’ve had to say something like, I want to be a person who’s able to respond when I see something difficult happen and I’m feeling like that’s happening right now and I don’t really feel like I have the skills to engage, but I just could not say something.
00;22;11;02 – 00;22;37;07
K. Scarry
Or I think there’s a way in which we can get even beneath the tools to having a different set of tools, which is this kind of ability to language with real honesty, the place we enter from. So I think about the reverse of that. When I have had people say to me that I’ve done real harm, I really pride myself on feeling like I have tools to be a good friend and a good community member.
00;22;37;07 – 00;22;54;28
K. Scarry
And so it can be really hard for me to be able to immediately see the ways that I do harm. I think I’ve shifted to a definition of being a good community member that includes being able to reckon with harm. But I think there was a lot of years where my definition of being a good friend meant that I never did harm.
00;22;54;28 – 00;23;14;18
K. Scarry
And so when it was this identity crisis, when people would surface those things for me, and so learning to not jump to trying to absolve myself, even if I notice myself starting to get panicky, is to be able again to say, I want to be able to hear you. I want to be able to honor what you’re sharing, and I want to be able to make amends.
00;23;14;18 – 00;23;43;00
K. Scarry
And right now, I notice myself getting heightened. You’re going to expect that I’m going to sit with this and I’ll call you tomorrow so we can keep sorting it out. And some of that to me is also that we play a long game, that there’s kind of the table moment and there’s possibility in that. And if you realize in three days that you said something that you wish you didn’t or you saw it land in a way that seemed to maybe not be what you intended, you can call that person and follow up and just say, I want to check in here because this is continuing to sit with me.
00;23;43;00 – 00;24;01;12
K. Scarry
And it didn’t feel right and I want to sort that out with you. Another instance does come to mind, I think, about a person who had to walk away from the table in a moment of real anger. And something that was instructive about that for me is there’s a way in which you can see that it’s like I’m disengaging because I don’t care.
00;24;01;18 – 00;24;21;24
K. Scarry
There’s a way in which you can see that as, I’m going to step away because I care enough to tend to this conversation well, and I needed a second to clear my head. And so I also think that’s been a learning for us that we’ve really shifted to kind of framing things in that way. If we know we’re going to lead a community through a conversation that might be heated, we’ll say that.
00;24;21;24 – 00;24;43;28
K. Scarry
We’ll say, Hey, if you need a minute to step away, do it, and we will consider it faithfulness. We’ll consider it you acting with care. And so some of it is just cutting through all the ways that we think our actions signal things that maybe they don’t. And so I think there’s a lot of ways in which we can kind of language for people, Here’s what I’m doing and here’s why and here’s where I’m at.
00;24;44;00 – 00;24;55;13
K. Scarry
It really helps you move through dicey moments, even if the answer is, I don’t know where to go from here, but I know that it’s important that I figure out something so let me call you tomorrow. Let me take some time.
00;24;55;15 – 00;25;18;28
Cindy Holmes
I really appreciate you sharing the examples of both in your own early learning about how to support people in entering and the kind of prep work that you describe. Kind of like how do we create a context where we can gather and what kinds of ways can we support people? So you’re own learning of maybe in that early experience we didn’t think through that.
00;25;18;28 – 00;26;01;08
Cindy Holmes
Here’s what we learned through that so often as organizers or facilitators, we don’t talk about places where that didn’t go so well and maybe we could have done something different. And so I really appreciate you sharing your own learnings through that, because I think it helps folks who might be thinking about starting some of these kinds of initiatives or groups or spaces inviting people to gather around the table that things may not always go as planned and you can learn from it and you can make changes, and also that you shared about how important it is to be thoughtful about who you’re bringing together, what kinds of things might be helpful to support people
00;26;01;08 – 00;26;34;17
Cindy Holmes
in coming. One of the things that I’m really interested in is this piece of bringing people together around differences, but also not just differences that are neutral, but that are actually power laden. And so how do we not pretend that there isn’t a history or a present day reality where people don’t feel safe and in having conversations or even being in a space with one another, given the contexts of oppression, violence, and disrespect that people may be experiencing in their communities.
00;26;34;17 – 00;27;03;09
Cindy Holmes
So it’s the gathering may not be the same for some folks. There may be bigger risks in coming for some people than for others. And so what you’ve shared is really just speaking to that. And I think the role of the facilitator, but also the role of the participant in both taking responsibility to speak about impact, how they’re doing, maybe leave the situation in order to take care of themselves, but also not harm others.
00;27;03;13 – 00;27;12;00
Cindy Holmes
These are some of the things that are really resonating with me and around some of the complexities of gathering and of facilitating.
00;27;12;02 – 00;27;39;16
K. Scarry
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think a couple other thoughts, because you’re right, there’s absolutely power differentials in a room. And I mean, even to have a facilitator is to create a power structure at a table itself. You know, is to give a person, even if we try very hard to make sure our facilitators are participants and peers of the community itself, but to be titled as facilitator or even just we don’t use the title even just to introduce the questions creates a power differential.
00;27;39;19 – 00;28;05;26
K. Scarry
I think about this in a couple of ways. You know, when we’re working with a partner, we think about us as bringing kind of the expertise around this framework and that they bring the expertise around their community. If a partner wants to gather folks across cultural lines, we will make sure that there is somebody on the ground in the community from each of the cultures we want to be able to represent who’s in the leadership team of designing the questions and conditions.
00;28;05;28 – 00;28;27;17
K. Scarry
Something that I think is also important for us is if we’re going to do a conversation across racial lines, we’re trying to make it as even of a split of identities as we can. We did some work with Erie, Pennsylvania, even though we had kind of four caucus groups that were gathering together. We had a White caucus group, a African-American and new immigrant.
00;28;27;17 – 00;28;55;00
K. Scarry
One and then a Latinx one. And even though that wasn’t, those groups didn’t make up 25% of the area themselves. They did in the series, which was one way we tried to kind of mitigate the power differential. We have at times done a series of gatherings where we’ve asked certain people to be silent in the first couple and only as a way of kind of really giving certain people voices and experiences and elevated space without worrying how they would hear.
00;28;55;02 – 00;29;18;21
K. Scarry
We try to also let people self-select in, so we try to be really clear about exactly what they’re signing up for and what it might require and what it won’t require. And knowing kind of what exit ramps they have to step out at any point so that their involvement is consistently enthusiastic consent. Also, we ask a lot of questions in the kind of setting of ground rules around what would make you feel safe to show up here?
00;29;18;23 – 00;29;40;10
K. Scarry
What would make you feel like you could show up and share? And then we fold those in. Then we also don’t ever promise that people aren’t going to be harmed. I think we can promise and be accountable to it, to doing our due diligence. And there’s so much that might happen on a table that we can’t control. And I think being really transparent about that is important and there’s a way to live in integrity in the work.
00;29;40;12 – 00;30;00;15
K. Scarry
The last thing I’ll say is that often if we’re doing a real deep dive amongst folks from identity or ideological difference, we will do it in a series base. We’re really careful about what questions we ask. So when we gathered folks in Erie, Pennsylvania, across racial lines, our first dinner, we had everybody together. There were 80 participants, 20 from each of those caucus groups.
00;30;00;18 – 00;30;20;09
K. Scarry
And the first dinner was a lot of questions about like, what’s your Erie story? What brings you here? What keeps you here? Things like what’s a common misconception you think people hold about Erie and what might surprise them. Then we split into those affinity or caucus spaces and we asked the African-American group about what’s an experience of racial injustice
00;30;20;09 – 00;30;36;00
K. Scarry
You’ve had in Erie. So we’re surfacing kind of –that you’d long to have a witness for Was kind of the way that we framed that question. Well, we’re asking that question in a group of people who can nod and understand from a place that the white folks in the room can’t. And we’re never going to ask that question in a mixed race
00;30;36;00 – 00;30;54;21
K. Scarry
Space. The end of those kind of affinity or caucus gatherings include questions like, what do you want the other group to know about what was shared here? And so then we can share those upfront so that the group is still able to get to know one another more deeply without asking people to be vulnerable with something that’s particularly traumatic.
00;30;54;23 – 00;31;09;24
K. Scarry
And you know, the series were kind of gathering over a set of time. We asked folks to commit to X amount of gatherings and we try to deepen trust as we go. So each gathering we’ll ask a little bit deeper of a set of questions.
00;31;09;26 – 00;31;34;13
Cindy Holmes
These are such helpful examples and really get to the complexities of doing the work in a good way. And I’m really grateful to have you share all of these things about what makes it safe enough and not pretending that the space is neutral or that everyone is coming in with the same experience and the same risks. It’s so helpful.
00;31;34;20 – 00;31;55;00
Cindy Holmes
I’m wondering if we could go back to just having you talk a little bit about the kinds of things that you’re doing with the People’s Supper that might be in particular places, supporting community building, civic participation. Any examples of some of the projects that you’re working on now or in the past?
00;31;55;02 – 00;32;17;13
K. Scarry
So Erie’s a good example. There was a study done by USA Today in 2017 that named Erie the worst place in the country for African-Americans to live and so the mayor called us in wanting to figure out how they could anchor solutions to a national problem in a really particular local place. And so we started by really kind of gathering this group of 80 and and it was a fascinating series.
00;32;17;13 – 00;32;36;14
K. Scarry
They did six dinners together and the mayor committed before the dinners started that he would take on whatever ideas they came up with to make Erie more equitable. So throughout the series, we brought them together for questions. We invited them to ask their larger community the questions that they were being asked and to bring those stories into the room.
00;32;36;16 – 00;33;03;17
K. Scarry
And then our final dinner was a chance for us to look at all that they had learned. And then to consider together what might this tell us about what needs to happen to make Erie a more equitable place at a policy and systems level? And they came up with ten recommendations and then invited 300 community members across Erie to have the same kind of people’s supper style experience, hear their ideas, and then all together make commitments to see these ideas come to life.
00;33;03;20 – 00;33;29;10
K. Scarry
Those participants then became the DEI council members that advised the mayor from then on and there’s something really powerful about that. And I think it’s easy in the aftermath of an issue of injustice or of harm that we see on the news or in our communities. It’s people often say we just need to get to know each other better or we just need to change systems.
00;33;29;10 – 00;33;51;10
K. Scarry
And I think there’s something really powerful about how can those things inform one another? And something that I think is significant about Erie as well is that they needed to trust one another because the implementation of those ideas was going to take many years, and so they needed to have a foundation of relationship that could see through the implementation of the ideas that they had come up with.
00;33;51;12 – 00;34;05;03
K. Scarry
And so it wasn’t just let’s sit down for dinner so that we can surface things that need to change. It was how do we build the deep relational tissue that will sustain us through the implementation of culture change over time? That felt significant.
00;34;05;05 – 00;34;35;01
Cindy Holmes
That is so significant. I just think that piece about recognizing the time that is needed for this work, that it isn’t often something that is a quick fix or a one time conversation. It’s so important to recognize, but also that there was commitment at this civic level from the mayor’s office to recognize that it was going to be work that had to take place over time that needs to be resourced.
00;34;35;03 – 00;34;45;24
Cindy Holmes
And also the piece about just that sense that there’s a series and that is about building relationships at a deeper level that need to happen.
00;34;45;26 – 00;35;05;22
K. Scarry
Yeah, absolutely. It was a really transformative body of work for me and I really appreciated the space to kind of play in the relationship between relationships building and systems change, and it’s informed a lot of our work from here. Some of our current work is, like I said, with the United Methodist Church, we’re doing some deep community wide work.
00;35;05;22 – 00;35;27;05
K. Scarry
We’ve trained up a group of –we’re calling Brave Conversation Resourcers. We’ve trained up a group of leaders across the conference who are available to accompany congregations through moments of rupture or conversations that they don’t know how to have. And so it’s really exciting. It’s exciting because it gets us out of the room, you know, it’s tools we’ve been learning for years that we can offer to other people.
00;35;27;07 – 00;35;50;14
K. Scarry
We’re doing some work with the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, which has been really a fascinating body of work. I worked with Eric Adams when he was the borough president and he wanted to do a series of what they’re calling breaking bread, building bonds, dinners, and then COVID hit. So we moved those virtually, but weren’t able to kind of sustain the same amount of momentum that we had hoped.
00;35;50;16 – 00;36;13;19
K. Scarry
And virtual gatherings both lower barriers to entry for some and heighten them for others. So there is complexity to that for sure. But I’m excited about the work with Eric Adams as mayor. You know, we’re working primarily with his Office of Prevention of Hate Crimes as our main kind of contact. And Eric Adam’s goal is to have at least 1000 dinners that happen.
00;36;13;22 – 00;36;40;04
K. Scarry
But the kind of texture of that is really profound. I think, you know, we’re both resourcing individuals who want to just get to know their neighbors better. We’re resourcing organizations that want to gather people around a particular issue set that they’re trying to address, whether that be to better have a sense of how their organizational decisions are impacting the people they’re intended to serve, or whether they want to use kind of a dinner to expand, who knows about the work that they’re doing.
00;36;40;06 – 00;36;49;08
K. Scarry
And then at the city agency level that all city agencies in New York City are going to do a set of these breaking bread building bonds dinners.
00;36;49;11 – 00;36;50;22
Cindy Holmes
Wow, that’s great.
00;36;50;25 – 00;37;09;05
K. Scarry
Really cool. We’re having some good conversations with them about how to be strategic about them. So maybe for some city agencies, it looks like, oh we really don’t know our constituents as well as we thought. We like to do that. Maybe it’s an audit of who’s accessing the resources you have available at a city level and who isn’t.
00;37;09;05 – 00;37;15;15
K. Scarry
And maybe it’s a way of trying to bridge that gap, you know, and really get underneath why people might not be accessing those.
00;37;15;22 – 00;37;40;23
Cindy Holmes
Wow. So much to imagine. And I’m just quite inspired by how it’s happening at different levels there in that project with the staff, with people and communities and neighborhoods, and also with particular sectors or groups, a lot of complexity. I wonder if you could say a little bit about how you think people are affected both individually and then within the broader community.
00;37;40;23 – 00;37;54;07
Cindy Holmes
Maybe some examples. For example, what are people leaving with? What are the ways people are impacted when they participate in a people’s supper gathering or dinner dialogue?
00;37;54;09 – 00;38;15;13
K. Scarry
I would say we draw a pretty clear distinction between connection and community, and so connecting with one another, I think a lot of people leave, having, feeling a sense of connection. I think the hope is that they’re also building a set of tools that can work towards deeper community formation and kind of this deeper accompaniment of people beyond the table.
00;38;15;15 – 00;38;36;07
K. Scarry
Every partner that we work with, we kind of design a different set of outcomes. So for some in Erie, it really mattered that systems change was the thing. There are other places that we’ve worked with where the goal was really positive points of social connection, where we could complicate the narratives about each other when it’s all too easy to otherwise retreat into our ideological silos.
00;38;36;07 – 00;39;00;05
K. Scarry
Can I complicate a narrative here? It’s hard to quantify because I also think we had somebody who came through one of our series a few years ago who’s a professor who talks about how she learned tools at the table that she then used in her classroom to kind of invite students to deeper question or to ask to lead with different amounts of curiosity to help students arrive at the answers on their own instead of her feeding those to them.
00;39;00;08 – 00;39;26;25
K. Scarry
I also think there’s times at which, like we feel the acuteness of polarization in our closest relationship, and I might never be able to go there with this particular family member who holds these ideologies. But if I sit down at a table with someone who has the same ideologies, who illuminates something for me about those ideologies I’ve never considered before, it might then produce greater empathy for the person that I have known and loved and been in relationship with for a long time.
00;39;26;28 – 00;39;46;12
K. Scarry
I think there’s an assumption a lot of the time that what we’re doing is trying to make everybody who shows up to the table be really good friends or be in really good relationship directly with each other. But there’s possibility for how our experience with one another can inform relationships beyond the table as well. And so that I think is also really meaningful and important here.
00;39;46;14 – 00;40;24;18
Cindy Holmes
I’m wondering if we could talk a little bit about the meal and the shared meal as a space. One of the things that we have been noticing through looking at a lot of different dinner dialogue initiatives is that the shared meal as a sacred space and a site of healing is a theme. And we’re curious about that and how some folks have suggested that experience gathering to share the food and dialogue can be a spiritual experience regardless of whether folks may be connected to a faith tradition or religion.
00;40;24;20 – 00;40;47;17
Cindy Holmes
And so I just wondered whether you could speak at all about your thoughts around spirituality in that work of organizing the dinner dialogues. And I know you mentioned that the People’s Supper is not a faith based organization, but I wonder if you can just say a little bit about what that connection might be around spirituality and the sharing of the meal and the dialogue.
00;40;47;25 – 00;41;09;26
K. Scarry
that’s a great question. I think there’s a lot of things that happen in the sharing of a meal that are deeply connective and to me that are deeply spiritual and profound. I find myself in my own sense of ministry often blessing with, may the food we share nourish our bodies and may the conversation we share, nourish our spirits.
00;41;09;28 – 00;41;38;08
K. Scarry
And there’s something about the connectivity to our own body that I think can’t be lost in this. You often hear people talk about the table as a space that anyone can come together. Everyone has to eat. So it’s an easy point of connection. I mean, I think that’s true. It’s more than that. I think there’s something about the ability for me to pour a glass of water for you or to pass you a plate that kind of creates some natural pause in conversation that can be really meaningful and important and healthy.
00;41;38;11 – 00;42;04;19
K. Scarry
It also keeps me connected to my own body when so much of my own experience of what other people in the world happens in my body, but so much of our own conversation, it’s easy for those things to happen in our head. And so getting what’s true, being a thing that connects our minds and our bodies and our relationship to one another, I think is deeply spiritual work. But I also think about a table itself that gives you some space.
00;42;04;19 – 00;42;26;21
K. Scarry
You know, you can kind of fidget underneath the table, like there’s ways in which you can engage with your own self in a way that’s a little bit hidden that I think is really meaningful to people. And yeah, I think about using ritual and practice that is familiar as an entry to that which is unfamiliar or perhaps is uncomfortable.
00;42;26;24 – 00;42;51;06
K. Scarry
There’s something about the ritual of a meal that is familiar and so it’s not just, oh this is something we all share so we can all do it. It’s the familiarity of this practice that grounds us in something shared so we can lean in to something maybe a little bit uncomfortable, something that may not be shared in our own experiences or something beyond the familiar and one another.
00;42;51;08 – 00;43;15;27
K. Scarry
While still being tethered to something that we know. We know how to do this. We know how to eat together. We know how to pass plates. We know how to do all of that. And so when we’re trying to do this relational piece of a lot of things we might not know about how to be in good relationship to each other, I think there’s something really spiritual about the ritual of an actual meal shared that tethers us as we’re trying to do this other relational work.
00;43;15;29 – 00;43;30;14
Cindy Holmes
Yeah, that really resonates with me too. I wonder if there’s any connections between spirituality and social justice for you in this work. I’m wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.
00;43;30;16 – 00;43;55;14
K. Scarry
Yeah, I think there has to be. I don’t think that you can really tend to the bodies and spirits of one another without really doing the work of social justice. I don’t think that you can really actually sit and hold and grock the realities of others lived experiences without being propelled to work for real justice. I think that’s the work of learning to know and love and be in right
00;43;55;14 – 00;44;19;08
K. Scarry
relationship to your larger community is deeply spiritual work. And I think what I hope happens that people’s supper is also that this is the work of seeing, of uncovering what’s true about what each other’s lives look like and really seeing one another. And of that, seeing and uncovering propelling us to build communities where everyone is able to flourish. The people’s supper
00;44;19;08 – 00;44;46;23
K. Scarry
We really think about every single detail as an opportunity to do deep relational work. And so even thinking about how you do the food, you work with the community that was trying to really have deep conversations about their neighbors who were impoverished and they thought about making sure that they provided a meal. So as we do potluck, but this partner needed to provide a meal so that everyone – there wasn’t any sort of, you can only come if you can bring something or we’re going to notice what you might bring up.
00;44;46;28 – 00;45;06;16
K. Scarry
But they also weren’t going to meet in a country club. They weren’t going to meet in turf, if you will. That belonged to a very particular part of the community. And so it’s not just that like, it’s just willy nilly throw a meal together, but how do we be really thoughtful about where we have the meal, what we have for the meal, how we make this approach a place of welcome.
00;45;06;18 – 00;45;29;20
K. Scarry
And to me that again, it’s even that is practice towards social justice work that we can practice what it means to be mindful of all the ways we can set a particular space to be a space that other people feel like they can belong. Hopefully that tips us off to the reality that there’s a way in which we set up our communities as well towards belonging or not.
00;45;29;22 – 00;45;47;11
K. Scarry
And those things need examination and they need the voices of many people to share what the impact of this kind of high level decisions that might be made in a community in our communities. And that visibility into that, I think is also the work of social justice.
00;45;47;13 – 00;46;22;04
Cindy Holmes
I’m really interested to hear you talk about some gatherings around the table being potluck and some of them not, and that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about as well, that the potluck can be a way to make folks feel engaged. And it could also be a barrier for others to engaging. And so having that meal provided could really reduce a lot of barriers and actually create a more equitable place for people to enter.
00;46;22;06 – 00;46;42;11
K. Scarry
Yeah, it so depends, I mean, because of what you just named and I think there’s just this choose your own adventure, you can kind of do it in a million. If we’re going to do potluck style, we’re pretty clear in invitations to say, but we also know that some people are busy or some people like, you know, our very baseline is that we want these people to come.
00;46;42;13 – 00;46;57;08
K. Scarry
If people want to be able to contribute in this way, they’re welcome to. But it’s not a barrier to entry. We try to name that and we try to give even in that naming, you heard me say like, maybe you’re too busy. Like we’re trying to give all kinds of other signals for folks because we’re so hyper aware of our own experience.
00;46;57;08 – 00;47;15;19
K. Scarry
We assume everyone is as aware or reading us that same way. So if I’m a person who actually can’t afford to bring food, I think that’s what people are going to think. But if we’ve signaled in an invitation like, Hey, we know folks are busy, we’ll make sure there’s enough food, then everyone will read that as a move of busyness.
00;47;15;19 – 00;47;35;28
K. Scarry
And that’s no big deal because we’ve set for everyone the tone that it’s okay. Our most important thing is that you come and we don’t want you’re not bringing food to be a barrier here because genuinely we’re asking you to trust that that’s not the thing. We’ve done some communities where we’ve done, you know, like just the dessert is a potluck and some communities where a potluck was already the ritual of their coming together.
00;47;35;28 – 00;47;58;12
K. Scarry
And so it wasn’t any sort of different thing to say. We’re doing this potluck style. They did potlucks every single week. And so that made sense. And we kind of folded our work into the life of their community already. So all of that is contextual. And we’ve also thought about kind of how we’ve framed it. So you could say, you know, if you want to do just a potluck dessert, you might say like, bring your favorite sweet treat.
00;47;58;12 – 00;48;16;17
K. Scarry
Well, that gives you a chance to like, you could bring a bag of M&Ms for all I care. And that’s your favorite sweet treat to share, you know, And so there’s a way in which, too, there’s a frame that’s not just potluck dessert that kind of leaves this free for all. That creates a hierarchy. But like, bring your favorite are like your favorite guilty pleasure.
00;48;16;17 – 00;48;24;00
K. Scarry
Sweets. You know, that gives people access to bringing all kinds of things without creating any sort of hierarchy.
00;48;24;02 – 00;48;46;10
Cindy Holmes
Yeah, that’s great. Great examples. I’m wondering if there’s any lessons you’ve learned from the work you’ve shared so much already around this, but anything else you want to add that might be helpful for people who are thinking about starting a dinner dialogue or for folks who are wanting to try and gather people around the table for a meal and dialogue.
00;48;46;12 – 00;48;52;15
Cindy Holmes
Any other lessons or tips that you’d like to share? You’ve already covered a lot.
00;48;52;17 – 00;49;11;18
K. Scarry
I really think it comes down to that modeling of transparency. I am inviting you because it really matters to me that people know that on Tuesday nights there’s a place that they can come over and I want you to feel welcome at my home and we’re going to be here. You want to come? Great. You don’t. Not to me, so much of it is the modeling of that vulnerability and transparency.
00;49;11;18 – 00;49;30;15
K. Scarry
So you’re not leaving people guessing, especially when you’re inviting them to something vulnerable to give them as much clues as they can about the agency that they’re going to have in the gathering and what they’re really walking into. We find this in our work a lot, especially if we’re gathering folks across ideological difference. There’s often a skepticism about, oh am I just being invited?
00;49;30;15 – 00;49;56;03
K. Scarry
So my mind will we changed? It doesn’t matter how many times I talk to people, we want to create a space where we can kind of hold complexity or we can hold a plethora of perspective. Everyone thinks they’re walking into something where people are going to try and change their mind. Everyone shows up combative. The only way to get past some of that is to do it and to be in it together and to prove through the experience that really we’re not trying to set something up like that here.
00;49;56;03 – 00;50;30;10
K. Scarry
And so that’s a huge part of it, is just being willing to start being transparent about your intentions and what you’re hopeful for and why you want these particular people to be the ones that you gather with and giving them agency to go to the space by asking them kind of how the invitation even feels and what would make it feel accessible and all of those and I think the practice of continually checking in along the way so that you’re able to make sure that the thing that you’re building is actually aligned with the intentions you have for it is a really good and rich practice that I think people keep coming back not just
00;50;30;10 – 00;50;50;18
K. Scarry
because gatherings are perfect, but because they feel like they can trust that we’re creating something collectively here and they’re going to keep coming back when they feel like the relationship is nimble enough to be sustained and to move through when things go awry. I mean, that’s what I named earlier about how often we panic about conflict so much we can’t actually get to conflict.
00;50;50;18 – 00;51;09;01
K. Scarry
We all know conflict is normal and we want relationships that have no conflict, Sure. But I don’t think we really expect that. But it’s the cutting through on the front end of, this is going to happen and we’re going to move through it. This is normal. We’re going to be people together here. And so there’s a lot that might happen.
00;51;09;01 – 00;51;30;07
K. Scarry
We might have days that the conversation totally falls flat and that will be data too, it will tell us we don’t have any practice in this, so we should keep trying. I think that playing the long game, the consistency of checking in, the vulnerability about where you are and where you want to be and inviting folks to kind of co-create that whole thing alongside you are really the ingredients for the thing.
00;51;30;07 – 00;52;02;25
K. Scarry
More than a perfect set of discussion questions, a perfect meal, a perfect location. And there’s something I love about even, well, something that was instructive for me, even about kind of early days of Tuesday dinner. There was a day I ran out of chairs. And so with people, you know, sitting on a piano bench that makes you human with each other real fast, like we’re going to make this work allows you to really cut through some of the pretenses, you know, when, oh, I ran out of food, but I’m going to make you a grilled cheese and tomato soup like there’s something so human about that.
00;52;02;25 – 00;52;10;20
K. Scarry
Again, it’s also about being a vulnerable host such that you single for other people. That vulnerability is welcome here and I’m willing to meet you in it.
00;52;10;23 – 00;52;38;16
Cindy Holmes
Yeah. When you’re speaking about that vulnerability I think about also repair and how that seems to be such an important part of this as well. And being able to recognize that while we might be in conflict, that some folks may have experienced harm and so conflict is inevitable and a natural part of our relational life, we don’t want people to experience harm.
00;52;38;16 – 00;52;57;02
Cindy Holmes
And so then we have to figure out that piece about repair. I know that you have been interested in that and doing some work with the Faith Matters Network and a rural organization, Girl Assemblies. Yeah. So I don’t know if you want to add anything about that piece around repair.
00;52;57;05 – 00;53;28;25
K. Scarry
Yeah, what an instructive thing we’ve been part of this year and a half journey called Pathways to Repair, where our three organizations just were realizing how much we long to have better tools to move through real rupture and to move towards repair. And I don’t know, I’m still finding my own language for it, but I feel deeply transformed by the work, even in learning to apologize better and to learning to distinguish between taking responsibility for repair isn’t always the same as taking responsibility for harm.
00;53;28;28 – 00;53;54;09
K. Scarry
There’s this thing that happens where we get caught in this kind of, he said. She said, when actually like I can see and acknowledge that harm happened here and be responsible for the repair of our relationship, decoupling those feels really significant. I think repair of the landscape and not as kind of a step by step heading towards a particular arrival and thinking about really getting honest with ourselves about what might be possible.
00;53;54;09 – 00;54;17;24
K. Scarry
That to me shows up so much the people’s supper table. I mean, people want so badly and I want this and I respect it and I get it and it’s not realistic. We’re not going to sit down for one dinner and fix all the things. But what might be possible is that for the next hour we can operate differently together in a way that gives us insight into how our communities could look and we could keep practicing.
00;54;17;24 – 00;54;33;10
K. Scarry
Or what might be possible is I was able to be a little bit more vulnerable with you than I was a couple weeks ago, which means in a few weeks maybe I can get a little bit more vulnerable, which means that maybe in a year we can really have a deep conversation about that thing that’s always been taboo between us.
00;54;33;10 – 00;54;58;21
K. Scarry
And so I think pieces of that, of what might be possible. And I think, yeah, acknowledging that when we pull up a chair for another person, we’re pulling up a chair for all the other ghosts in the room to, a moment of reactivity in my own self or in someone else might be from that thing that happened to me ten years ago that was just triggered in this scenario or might be from a story that my family has held for generations about real harm.
00;54;58;21 – 00;55;16;27
K. Scarry
And so I think just so much of this work is just normalizing that this is what it is to be people and what it is to be people together. And knowing that we can kind of always be nimble and adjust and course correct and learn and I think is the heart of it.
00;55;16;29 – 00;55;31;15
Cindy Holmes
Are you imagining projects in the future that you are hoping to see to fruition or any sort of dreams that are, you think, both within the people supper or other kinds of initiatives like this that you might want to share with us?
00;55;31;17 – 00;55;57;21
K. Scarry
I feel a real deep sense of privilege to be doing this work because the questions and the inquiries I get to sit in all the time with all kinds of communities are questions people are asking everywhere, and almost nobody has the opportunity to really dig into those inquiries with all kinds of different communities and all different places and with all kinds of people.
00;55;57;23 – 00;56;22;00
K. Scarry
And something I feel proud of about the work is we’ve been pretty wed to the underlying idea that stories, that relationship building, can inform larger systems change, that we need to be able to heal together. That repair happens in the form of deep relationship with one another. But the form that that’s taken, we’ve been pretty nimble about by design.
00;56;22;03 – 00;56;42;23
K. Scarry
How do we tailor to the communities we’re working with because the particulars of the people in the room and the particulars of their identities and experiences really matter. All that to say we’re landing in a place where we’ve really gathered a ton of learnings and tools, and I feel the real challenge is how to not be a bottleneck for those things.
00;56;42;23 – 00;57;04;14
K. Scarry
Like I don’t want people to feel like they just have to work with us to gain access to the learnings that we’ve had for the last few years. And I think a dream of mine over the next few years is to really crack for how we can be able to elevate some of these learnings so that folks can access them and use them, even if we’re not in the room, only because we’ve had the chance to practice them and to learn in all kinds of settings.
00;57;04;14 – 00;57;24;19
K. Scarry
And like I said, not everybody has that and I think we can help people to not have to learn the hard way like we did. And I think that’s a dream of mine is really to solve for how we might really share out some of the lessons of our work in a more wide way because I think there’s a lot here that would be useful to folks.
00;57;24;21 – 00;57;58;09
Cindy Holmes
And so great to hear you say that. And I think this is really a great moment to remind people or to let folks know that we’ll be sharing resources from the People’s Supper. You’ve created some wonderful guidebooks and some tools that are available online, and so we’ll link to those on our website when we’re sharing the podcast. And I think that’s our hope with this research project and podcast is that we can share broadly about what people have been doing in different communities around similar kinds of dinner dialogues.
00;57;58;09 – 00;58;30;02
Cindy Holmes
Some of them draw on the work of the people’s Supper and then others didn’t know about people’s supper and they’ve started similar things. And it’s really exciting for us to see that and then think about how we can share it broadly. So people can take that learning and mobilize it in their communities. But I’m quite excited to see also what you’ve described of how the learning that you have gained of doing so many of these in so many different contexts, how that can be brought forward so more people can take it up and mobilize it.
00;58;30;05 – 00;58;39;20
Cindy Holmes
Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to add or is there anything that I’ve missed that you’re thinking? I’d really like to bring that forward.
00;58;39;23 – 00;58;56;08
K. Scarry
I don’t think so? It’s been so good to chat. I’ve been really excited about the work that you’re doing. There’s so many people who are trying to figure this stuff out too, and that’s energizing to me. And I’m always excited to learn from other practitioners in this world too, and nothing else comes immediately to mind.
00;58;56;11 – 00;59;18;00
Cindy Holmes
Yeah, thank you so much. I’m really excited by the work you’re doing. It’s really transformative. It’s inspired us so much and I’m really excited about taking it forward in different ways. So thanks so much, K.
00;59;18;03 – 00;59;43;06
Cindy Holmes
That’s it for this week and I look forward to seeing you next time if you’re enjoying this, you can subscribe at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts and follow us at our website aroundthetabledialogues.ca. Around the Table is produced by Cindy Holmes, Fionna Chong, and Leslie Williams.
On the unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples. Support for Around the Table comes from the University of Victoria, Vancouver Community College and the Sharing Farms Society.
Podcast editing is provided by New Leonard Media and music is by Oleksii Kaplunskyi.
Around the Table 