Designing Community Engagement and Public Dialogue Using CMM, CMM Institute, USA, 25 March 2026, webinar.
Join the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution as they welcome Public Dialogue Consortium President and Senior Consultant, Shawn Spano, for a webinar titled, Designing Community Engagement and Public Dialogue Using CMM, on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at 11:30 am Eastern US Time (UTC-5). In this 90-minute webinar, Shawn will share insights and provide practical tools that have emerged from his years of experience consulting with community and government agencies and facilitating public dialogue using the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) as the applied theoretical framework.
In the context of this important and urgent work of facilitating public dialogue, CMM prompts us to look at communities as complex webs of interconnected conversations involving residents, elected officials, and administrative staff. Bringing these diverse community members together to address issues of common concern (i.e. community engagement) requires careful attention and practical skills in developing processes that enable community members to express their views while simultaneously being open to hear the views of others (i.e. public dialogue).
Consider the following questions:
What do community engagement practitioners need to know and do to facilitate public dialogue?
How does this form of communication help community members develop a deeper understanding of the issues that divide them?
What are the practical tools that can enable community members to bridge their differences?
How does the current climate of polarized politics and adversarial confrontation impede public dialogue?
How can it open possibilities to build relationships and strengthen communities?
Shawn will address these questions by traversing across both theory and practice, offering a bridge between the two. He will demonstrate how community engagement practitioners can integrate CMM concepts into applied activities to improve patterns of communication in local communities. We seem to be at a crossroads in how people engage with each other in community contexts. We can continue to splinter and wall ourselves off from each other, or we can find a better way. This webinar will help chart the path to a better way.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 