Stowe on the Go facilitates difficult conversations using historical objects and nurtures common ground for common good.

In a divisive, increasingly polarized world, the Stowe Center helps communities recognize and appreciate where they are united.

Stowe on the Go offers facilitated experiences to help hone deep listening and constructive conversational skills that lead to better understanding of each other. We use museum collection items to ground each conversation in historical context and provide a springboard for discussion that helps lead to common ground.

Our approach helps participants practice skills for engaging in difficult conversations with open minds and respect for difference.

A Stowe on the Go experience leads to more cohesive groups that better understand each other. Our goal is for each person to say: “I will think about what you just said.”

To book your Stowe on The Go experience, please call Angie at 860-522-9258 ext. 321 or email her at mpena@stowecenter.org.

FEATURED EXPERIENCES

In this immersive experience, participants explore the profound impact of word choice on shaping perception and addressing systemic injustice. By examining historical objects and engaging with contemporary language, participants will:

  • Recognize how words can either challenge or perpetuate existing power structures.
  • Develop skills to critically engage with language in everyday sources like news, media, and advertisements.
  • Build confidence in using their own words to promote equity and justice.

This program empowers participants to harness the power of language to foster a more just world.

This transformative experience delves into the concepts of sharing authority and taking responsibility, using historical stories of literary activism to guide participants. Key components include:

  • Reflecting on the institution’s role as a site of authority and its responsibility to its communities.
  • Exploring the challenges and implications of speaking on behalf of others in contexts of unequal authority distribution.
  • Examining how individuals and organizations can use their authority to empower those systematically denied it.

Through in-depth discussions, participants will draft plans for building organizational equity, aiming to wield authority responsibly and create a more equitable present.

This experience equips participants with the tools to navigate deeply held beliefs and build common ground across differing perspectives. Key elements include:

  • Unpacking the idea of neutrality through the story and artifacts of a historical radical and the varied reactions to their radicalism.
  • Situating personal views within the contemporary political spectrum.
  • Gaining skills to engage with diverse perspectives, from friends and family to acquaintances and strangers.

Participants can enhance their learning with a shareable toolkit designed to foster constructive dialogue around divergent political viewpoints. Optional add-ons include a 30-minute walkthrough of the toolkit, or a 60-minute facilitated conversation on a specific topic, using the toolkit as a guide.

MORE DETAILS

Experience Packages

  • One 2-hour experience.
  • Three 2-hour experiences over 1-2 months.
  • Six 2-hour experiences over 3–6 months.

Includes:

  • Two consultation sessions to tailor the experience.
  • A follow-up session with data insights and success evaluation.

Add-ons:

  • Custom-made experiences tailored to your organization’s specific
  • Contextual and historical research to enhance the experience.

Facilitation- We provide expert facilitation to guide collaborative discussions, ensuring inclusivity, focus, and actionable outcomes. Through tailored strategies, we help your team achieve clarity, alignment, and meaningful progress on key goals.

Literary Activism Lecture- 45-minute presentation about the importance of the kind of language we use and its importance to creating common ground with 15- minute Q&A session.

A Taste of Stowe on the Go- In an hour-long presentation, explore two historical documents that reveal how language has been used to disenfranchise individuals. This engaging lesson also empowers participants to reflect on the impact of their own words, fostering awareness and responsibility in communication.

Archival Research: How to- One hour lesson on how to conduct archival research. This lesson covers the fundamentals of archival research, offering practical skills for conducting effective research.

Archival Research: Facilitation- 2 five-hour days of professional archival research conducted by one of our historians, providing expert insights and analysis.

Reading Against the Archives- Designed for ages 10 and up, this hands-on experience explores history through four primary documents. Participants analyze each piece individually and collectively, uncovering broader narratives and the significance of material culture—like handwriting, condition, and paper quality.

Inheriting Freedom: An Interactive Experience- This dynamic program brings history to life through engaging storytelling, hands-on activities, and interactive discussions. Tailored for libraries, schools, and community spaces, this experience immerses participants in the lives of historical figures, such as Frederick Douglass and the women who shaped his legacy. Key components include:

  • Live storytelling performance that transports participants back in time.
  • Tactile-based learning to explore material culture and historical context.
  • Facilitated discussions that encourage reflection and dialogue on community, justice, resilience, and activists.

Ideal for all ages, this program fosters a deeper understanding of history while making it engage, interactive, and relevant.

An intimate gathering for 8–12 guests. Choose from:

Bring History Home:
A historical tour from the comfort of your home.

  • Spiritualism as Resistance: Discover how 19th-century radicals and marginalized voices used Spiritualism to assert authority, challenge injustice, and envision a more equitable world through the contradictions of speaking the unspeakable.
  • When We Don’t See the Signs: Reflect on the influence of signs and their symbolic meanings through an 88-year-old Stowe House artifact, encouraging participants to reconsider the signs they encounter every day.
  • Bearing Credentials: Examine the power of language and systems of oppression through historic objects like the Black Census of Hartford, challenging unjust narratives and embracing literary activism for self-definition and change.

Invite Us to Facilitate:
Guided discussion to build connections.

Change happens through the committed efforts of communities working for the realization of their shared values in the world around them. While individuals make up communities, individuals are also made by their communities; and neither individual or community can arise completely divorced from the broader cultures (language, images, art) and systems (law, education, government, and more) that surround them.

Stowe on the Go is a unique Diversity*Equity*Inclusion initiative built on the foundational idea that addressing and ameliorating injustice and inequity requires an understanding of both the systems and cultures that define and perpetuate them, and the orientation of individuals and communities within them. In fostering this understanding, and by weaving back and forth between broad cultural ideas and personal relationships to them, our facilitators guide groups through programs that are at once honest and unflinching, and also empowering, focusing on the ways in which communities can refuse, remake, and reimagine an unjust status quo.

Additionally, Stowe on the Go is about more than ideas: it’s about history, with an extensive array of Collections items from the Stowe Center’s Vault to illustrate and instruct. We root our programs in the past, with an eye toward elucidating its complexity, and then facilitate deep conversation about the insights and ideas the past can offer us now. From statuary, to jewelry, to letters, to children’s books, we use our Collections to look critically at how objects and texts can be a projection or a challenge of expectations for ourselves, for others, and for the world around us: at times affirmations of power-as-it-is and at times resistances to it.

Memorable and engaging, inspiring and empowering, Stowe on the Go endeavors to be an initiative that participants take in and then carry on, beyond two hours, beyond their group, beyond what they thought they knew.

MEET OUR FACILITATORS

Erika Slocumb is a scholar of Black history. She is a PhD Candidate in Afro-American Studies and holds a Master of Science in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. At Stowe Center she expands the narratives of communities of the global majority, in conversation with Harriet Beecher Stowe and her work in social justice and civic engagement.

Anita brings a remarkable ability to tie historical issues to contemporary themes. Her calm demeanor helps all feel at ease and broaden understanding. Anita’s ability to make connections builds common ground quickly and enables an open conversation. Anita holds a PhD in American Literature from the University of Rochester.

Brenna’s skills at facilitating difficult conversations is impressive and combine deep listening with nimbleness from a decade of work in improv theater. They hold a bachelor’s degree in English and Sociology and a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Connecticut.