The Stowe Center presents Stowe on the Go: a program that facilitates difficult conversations using historical objects and nurtures common ground for common good. Revenue from this social enterprise directly fund the mission of the Stowe Center!
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.”
“I think [the experience] is very powerful. I believe it really shows you that the work never stops. I truly feel it demonstrates that we must continue to strive to make life better—not just for ourselves, but for everyone.”
- Ariana Barret-Peralta, Eversource
“I think that sometimes, especially growing up—I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s—it felt like [Black women] were often an afterthought, where it was just like, ‘Yeah, you know, and Harriet Tubman was there.’ But today, I learned about someone completely new to me who was a major player in this spiritual movement. And I am a spiritual person. So, I was just like, ‘There’s me.'”
- Tianna Glass-Tripp, Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence
“I loved walking into just a cozy, comfortable atmosphere with a group of people that I knew well, and it felt exciting to be learning something new with them.”
- Becca Thomson, East Hartford Public Schools
“I think it could be really challenging to have these conversations… I would be nervous about my beliefs being challenged but also being nervous about respecting other people’s boundaries in space… But we need to be challenged on our beliefs… And this felt like a very safe place to do that.”
- Amanda Prose, Hartford Healthcare
Explore impactful, immersive programs designed to educate, inspire, and promote meaningful conversations.
Featured Experiences
Words are Powerful
Explore the impact of word choice on perceptions and social justice.
Key Takeaways:
- Recognize the power of language.
- Engage critically with media and everyday sources.
- Use your words to foster equity and justice.
Words Make the World
Learn about sharing authority and responsibility using historical literary activism stories.
Key Components:
- Reflect on authority and responsibility.
- Speak on behalf of others ethically.
- Build plans for organizational equity.
Common Ground for Common Good
Develop tools to navigate differing perspectives and build understanding.
Highlights:
- Explore neutrality and radicalism through history.
- Situate personal views in the current political landscape.
- Gain skills for engaging diverse perspectives.
Optional Toolkit Add-Ons Available.
Our Offerings
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.
Specialized Workshops
- Facilitation services for guided collaborative discussions.
- Literary Activism Lecture: The impact of language on social justice.
- A Taste of SotG: Exploring labels and language through historical documents.
- Archival Research: Hands-on lessons and professional insights.
- Into the Archives: Engaging with primary documents for deeper learning.
EqualiTeas
An intimate gathering for 8–12 guests. Choose from:
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- Bring History Home: A historical tour from the comfort of your home.
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- 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.
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- Bring History Home: A historical tour from the comfort of your home.
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- 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.
Give the Gift of Stowe on the Go!
Looking for a unique and meaningful gift? Purchase a Stowe on the Go Gift Certificate and share an unforgettable experience with someone special! Perfect for history enthusiasts, lifelong learners, or anyone passionate about transformative conversations, these certificates can be used for any of our Stowe on the Go experiences.
Revenue from this social enterprise directly funds the mission of the Stowe Center!
Interested in booking? Please contact Mariangie (Angie) Peña, Sales and Marketing Manager of Stowe on the Go.
Phone: (860) 522-9258 ext. 321
Email: MPeña@StoweCenter
Thank you for your generous gift! A welcome letter and your membership card(s) will be mailed to you shortly.