Charleston County Public Library, SC
Written April 2019
“Mostly, we wanted people to come together and talk, and talk kindly to each other…people felt that impact and would carry that into other aspects of their lives.” Emilie Hancock, Adult Service Generalist, Mount Pleasant Regional Library [Charleston County Public Library]
When Emilie Hancock first discovered Living Room Conversations, she was intrigued. As a vocal advocate for community outreach and programming, Emilie saw potential for the library to use the Living Room Conversations tool to engage the community in a robust, healthy dialogue about important issues. A webinar for librarians seeking to create community dialogues introduced a variety of possible tools and methods. Among them, Living Room Conversations stood out to Emilie as having the greatest potential. After conducting more research (she is a librarian after all!), Emilie, with former colleague Brandon Britt, launched the library’s first Living Room Conversations in April 2019. Every other month since then, Emilie’s Mount Pleasant Regional Library has offered community-driven and community-focused Living Room Conversations.
Charleston County, South Carolina, is home to the state’s largest city, Charleston, and its largest town, Mount Pleasant. Located in the middle of South Carolina’s coastal border, Charleston County is home to about 350,000 residents, with a racial makeup of 64.2% white, 29.8% Black or African American, 1.3% Asian, 0.3% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 2.7% from other races, and 1.6% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin make up 5.4% of the population. As a suburb of Charleston, Mount Pleasant’s estimated population is 91,684, with less diverse racial demographics than the rest of the county, with whites representing 88.9% of the population, and greater numbers having achieved a bachelor’s or higher degree than the state average. Unsurprisingly, income levels are significantly higher than the South Carolina average.
Politically and culturally, Mount Pleasant offers unexpected diversity. In 2016 and 2018, Charleston County voted “light blue” in the spectrum between red (Republican) and blue (Democrat). Like other southern states, the more populous Charleston County has trended progressive, while the state as a whole remains predictably conservative. While the potential for diverse political and social issue viewpoints might come as a surprise to those outside the state, Emilie saw both the potential and the need for healthy conversations across differences in Mount Pleasant: “Charleston is interesting because the state is very red, but the city is more blue, so I have friends with completely opposing views.”
To go from seeing potential to launching a new program required a leap of faith and a few tactical choices from which others might learn. Emilie knew patrons enjoyed programs focused on dialogue and the library had hosted a successful Great Decisions program sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association in the past (Great Decisions, n.d). Knowing this, she took a “passive” approach, placing a poll on the library’s bulletin board just to solicit interest. She simply asked patrons to mark topics they might want to discuss with others. Seeing the range of topics, people became interested in learning more. From the poll results, Emilie was able to identify topics and announce the first few Living Room Conversations. “I really wanted the community to pick the topics, so I left the list of possibilities and a request for votes on the bulletin board for a month.” The topics garnering the most votes set the agenda for the first few Living Room Conversations: Race, Environment and Pollution, Guns and Responsibility, and Health Care.
Identifying topics of interest to the community was Emilie’s first step in creating a viable, community-driven program. Getting participants to show up was the second. Like communities of practice elsewhere, several factors influenced participants’ willingness to give Living Room Conversation a try. One participant recalled that she was reassured by “the fact that it was a library program, and I knew the space would be comfortable and without distractions. It was a trusted place and better than a more public place or a restaurant. So, being at the library was a positive, and in our community, the libraries have a wonderful reputation for having this kind of high-quality program. I figured they knew what they were doing.”
Trust and credibility is a consistent theme, both for the host organization and for those who are invited: “It was a great experience. The focus was on how healthcare works, and my colleague urged me to do it because she knew that I lived in London and Spain and my perspective would be appreciated. I was nervous because English is not my first language, and I wouldn’t have gone if [my colleague] hadn’t pushed me a bit. Emilie Hancock is so friendly and wonderful, so I knew she would be there with me.”
Nevertheless, the topics selected by participants had the potential to be contentious and volatile. In the process of inviting friends to participate in a later Living Room Conversation, one participant acknowledged, “A lot of the people I approached about participating in the Guns and Responsibility [conversation] worried that they would just be lectured.” Emilie remembers feeling as if everyone was holding their breath, trying to follow along, to see what would happen. The Living Room Conversations model helped ease the tension. By the end, she found participants were “just happy to meet each other and hear these stories. Some of them have become regulars.” As the program developed, participation was influenced by the Living Room Conversations model itself. The emphasis on listening and understanding became a draw for participants: “If people are not interested in solving problems, but just want to say what’s wrong with a politician, then I’m not as interested. The pendulum has been swinging in the hyper-partisan direction and it does a disservice to everyone. Living Room Conversations seemed to be doing its part to swing the pendulum in the other direction and highly value listening,” said a participant.
The first Living Room Conversation, held in April 2019, focused on Race & Ethnicity and drew a diverse and enthusiastic group. (The conversation guide used is now part of a three-part Race & Ethnicity conversation series). Two tables, with six participants each, were both facilitated by Emilie. She remembers colleagues and others telling her she was “brave” for choosing Race and Ethnicity as the inaugural topic. “But people were super respectful and ready to talk about it,” she recalls. “And I was thrilled afterward. The looks on people’s faces were great, it was clear that people were learning, and were being open. This was like a breath of fresh air for me.” She points to the conversation guide as critical in prompting participants to share experiences without shying away from painful topics. Emilie again points to the library’s previous hosting of Great Decisions as a key to the Living Room Conversation’s success. “In conversations with librarians in other parts of the country, I hear about people who think the wording of the Living Room Conversation guides is ‘liberal,’ but I’ve never heard that in Charleston! I attribute it to my community’s participation in Great Decisions, another civil discourse program.” One of the more fraught moments surrounded intergenerational differences. The perspectives of 20-year-olds were quite different from those of participants in their 60s: “It was hard to hear older people sharing stories of discrimination that happened not long ago. Also, conversations about micro-aggressions were hard for people to hear. But, even still, everyone loved being real and talking to each other.”
With good humor, Emilie admits her first measures of success were pretty basic: “Would people show up and would anyone run away screaming?” She had never seen a Living Room Conversation in action and, while she watched archived Living Room Conversations on the Living Room Conversations website, she was nervous during the first few Living Room Conversations and about her role as host. Over time, Emilie has sought to improve her facilitation skills, downloading articles and seeking help from Living Room Conversations volunteers and staff. Today, a few Living Room Conversation “regulars” are able to step in and assist. She also participates in monthly calls for public library Living Room Conversations hosts: “We share ideas for what works and doesn’t work.” Looking back today, over two years later, she believes success was due in part to striking the right balance between being a good moderator and letting participants drive the conversation forward.
Emilie also notes how essential it has been to access the model and downloadable guides, at no cost, to just start hosting. “From a practical perspective, because it’s a canned program, that was a huge draw for me. More than this, Living Room Conversation is perceived as neutral, so that’s also helpful.”
Encouraging more diverse and repeat participation is an ongoing challenge. The groups engaging with the library, especially in Mount Pleasant, tend to be older people who enjoy getting together and talking. The format and the setting are comfortable for them. In other communities, and even for younger residents of color and others in Mount Pleasant, the library may not be viewed the same way. Emilie can envision taking the Living Room Conversation out into the community, to churches, and other settings as a form of community outreach. For those who may not feel welcomed by the library, for whatever reason, she sees Living Room Conversations as a way to reach beyond the institution and, in the process, reveal how the library can show up in places where residents already feel comfortable.
Another participant imagines how Living Room Conversation might be deployed by public servants and elected officials, to practice listening and empathy in these roles, “Thinking of our local community, I believe local politicians and decision-makers should try Living Room Conversations, to get out of their own box, and drill down into issues, to listen and not get defensive. As an alternative to public hearings where the public is given ninety seconds to make a statement. That’s not set up to really listen or go deep.”
In the meantime, and while COVID-19 challenges public institutions to go virtual, Emilie is continuing to host online Living Room Conversations. Her advice to others hosting either community-driven virtual or in-person Living Room Conversations is “to expect a fair amount of silence. Listening is a big part of this. Prepare people to listen. Set expectations.” With expectations well-set, she has found her community willing to tackle tough topics and to leave the experience with greater understanding and empathy. A frequent participant concurs: “I don’t think we were looking to change anyone’s mind but to listen and understand other people’s perspectives. And that was accomplished. The environment was open to listening and understanding. We had different perspectives and we all listened.”
- Bohatch, E. (2018, June 5). Republicans Dominate Most SC Counties, Democrats Claim Few. The State. https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/election/article212557829.html Photo Credit: Branches. Charleston County Public Library. (n.d.). https://www.ccpl.org/branches
- Great Decisions. Foreign Policy Association. (n.d.). https://www.fpa.org/great_decisions/ *Great Decisions is America’s largest discussion program on world affairs. The Great Decisions program highlights eight critical foreign policy challenges facing Americans each year. In libraries across the country, Great Decisions discussion group participants discuss and debate each issue and complete a national opinion ballot to communicate their views to Congress and the White House.
