Grounds for Flourishing: Bringing Campus and Community into Dialogue

Strong communities depend on people’s ability to listen, learn, and work across differences. Grounds for Flourishing goes beyond a traditional speaker series by creating welcoming opportunities for U-M and community members to build relationships, explore challenging topics, and practice constructive dialogue.

The program is presented by the U-M School of Social Work’s Flourish Office. Rather than ask participants to immediately enter conversations about complex or potentially divisive issues, Grounds for Flourishing starts with informal gatherings to help build trust, safety, and interpersonal familiarity. From there, participants will be invited into facilitated conversations grounded in restorative practices, intergroup dialogue, civil discourse, and civic skill-building.

Gatherings will happen in Ann Arbor, Detroit and elsewhere.

Audience

• Community members and partners connected to dialogue topics.
• Practitioners working in social work, health, education, housing, and related fields.
• School of Social Work alumni, students, staff, and faculty.
• People with lived experience connected to dialogue topics.
• U-M students, staff, and faculty from partner schools and colleges, as appropriate.
• U-M Health Sciences Collective and SEAS partners, as appropriate.

What it offers

The program combines informal community gatherings, brief remarks from speakers and community leaders, and facilitated small-group conversations.

Connection → Dialogue → Action

• Move from relationship-building to dialogue and, when appropriate, toward collaborative action through Flourishing in Action.
• Learn from academic knowledge, professional practice, community expertise, and lived experience.
• Connect with students, faculty, staff, alumni, practitioners, and community members.
• Explore timely topics such as democracy, housing, health and wellbeing, identity, faith, and belonging.
• Practice listening, reflection, curiosity, and constructive disagreement.
• Participate in facilitated conversations rather than simply sit and listen.
• Engage in ways that feel comfortable, including speaking, listening, writing, reflection, and art-making.

Public events

September 2026–August 2027 — Grounds for FlourishingMonthly gatherings will begin with informal connection over coffee, tea, or food, then invite participants into an optional facilitated dialogue. 

September 28, 2026 — Telling Stories About Climate Resilience: Junk Journaling and Collage WorkshopParticipants will learn the basics of climate resilience and explore how to apply these concepts to art by using recycled materials. After learning brief visual storytelling techniques, attendees will tell their own climate stories by creating collages/junk journals.

September 29, 2026 — The Power of DialogueThis interactive workshop will introduce participants to dialogue as a tool for connection, understanding, wellbeing, and positive change. Co-facilitated by Patrick Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz of U-M’s Program on Intergroup Relations and Lauren Fardig-Diop of the Detroit Justice Center, the session will explore restorative practices, listening across differences, and the distinction between dialogue and debate.

October 1, 2026 — When You Change Yourself, You Change the World: Lunch in the SukkahPresented with the Jewish Communal Leadership Program, this community gathering will use shared food and optional dialogue prompts to explore home, hope, belonging, hospitality, and the communities we want to create together. All students, staff, and faculty are welcome, regardless of their familiarity with Judaism or Jewish holidays.

October 15, 2026 — Flourishing in Action: The Politics of Social WorkPanelists Justin Hodge, Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, and Victoria Genetin will explore how policy, power, advocacy, and civic engagement shape social work and the communities the profession serves. The panel will create space for dialogue, reflection, and consideration of how social workers can move from conversation toward informed action.

November 3, 2026 — Election Day Dialogue: Sustaining Democracy Through DialogueThis Grounds for Flourishing gathering will explore the role of dialogue in sustaining democracy, public trust, and collective responsibility. Rather than debating candidates or outcomes, participants will consider how communities can listen with humility, remain connected across political differences, and practice civic responsibility during uncertainty or disagreement.

Winter 2027 — Health and Well-Being DialogueThis gathering will connect with U-M’s Look to Michigan Health and Well-Being thematic year and explore health and wellbeing as collective responsibilities. Potential areas of dialogue include mental health, belonging, community care, health equity, and access.

Winter 2027 — When You Change Yourself, You Change the World: Ramadan Iftar and DialogueThis gathering will bring university and community members together for shared food, reflection, and dialogue during Ramadan. The conversation will center on compassion, generosity, shared responsibility, and community connection. Date and location to be announced.

Throughout 2026–2027 — Seeds for ConnectionSeeds for Connection, the initiative's student-led component, will offer recurring conversations on community-identified and emerging topics. Sessions will be offered in person and virtually, with virtual participation available for many conversations.

Impact on the public good

Grounds for Flourishing will model how relationship-building and dialogue can create the foundation for thoughtful, community-informed action. By bringing together university and community members in welcoming, facilitated spaces, the program will help participants build trust, listen across differences, and better understand the perspectives and lived experiences that should inform responses to shared challenges. Participants will strengthen their curiosity, confidence, and willingness to engage with others, not necessarily to reach consensus, but to identify common concerns and possibilities for collaborative problem-solving.

The program will also train students, staff, faculty, and community facilitators and produce reusable dialogue guides, reflection prompts, and evaluation tools. Together, these resources will support a replicable progression from connection to dialogue to action that communities, nonprofits, public agencies, educational institutions, libraries, faith-based groups, and other civic organizations across Michigan can adapt. By demonstrating that effective action begins with relationships and careful listening, Grounds for Flourishing will help strengthen civic trust, community participation, and the capacity to address complex public issues together.