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Cultural Shifting: Community Leadership and Change
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Community inclusion for people with disabilities is a challenging task. One key reason for the challenge is that many people with disabilities are often ushered off to disability specific settings. A recent book by, Al Condeluci, Ph.D., Executive Director of United Cerebral Palsy of Pittsburgh, explores this challenge with a concept he calls, “Cultural Shifting”. The concept looks to reconnect isolated folks by focusing on the person’s interests or positive aspects of their lives and reconnect them to the community at large. This book is the third in a series by Condeluci that explores community. His first 2 books are, Interdependence: The Route, Community (1991, 95) and Beyond Difference (1996).
With disability, the likelihood of people being seen from the perspective of medical ailments often leads to community separation and stigma. The culture in which we live places persons with disabilities into a medical entanglement of terms, expectations and into exclusionary groups. This is often the first step of disconnection. Medical professionals focus and make decisions around “fixing the person’s problem.” Emphasis and energy is placed on the person’s differences and “fixing” the problem becomes the agenda rather than re-thinking how a person can remain or be a participant in our community through similarities.
Dr. Condeluci suggests that as a community we need to change the way we think regarding persons with disabilities and other types of labels. In his book, Cultural Shifting: Community Leadership and Change, (2002, TRN Press) he uses the metaphor of a bridge. “Bridges are interesting structures as they blend two important notions, the simplicity of connecting two points, and the complexity of the engineering necessary to make the connection. This blending is clear when you a look at the challenge of seeing the reconnection of people to community. The challenge is simple as we try to find ways for people, who are disconnected, to be reunited. The complexity is in making this happen.”
In Cultural Shifting, Dr. Condeluci suggests a four-step process by which it can be achieved. The first step is to find the passion or point of connection between people that they feel good about and still have in their lives. Some of these points of connection can include: interests, hopes, dreams, skills, talents, fantasies, hobbies and strengths. This focus on strengths is in contrast of looking at a person’s illness, medical diagnosis or condition that can be disempowering. If a person who has cerebral palsy has an interest in jazz music the focus for connection to the community is jazz, not the condition or diagnosis.
The second step is to find a venue or play point where the person might be accepted. This step sets the stage for inclusion and cultural shifting. If you find a place or setting where persons may reunite with other persons of similar interests. Finding a jazz club to participate in may connect a person interested in jazz. A key element to step two is to find a natural venue that matches the interest or positive points of the individual and is not set-aside for people with a specific ailment or disability. A jazz club should be chosen because of the music and interest surrounding the music. This should be a place where people who love jazz come together, not a place where persons with a certain disability come together to hear jazz.
The third step that Dr. Condeluci addresses in his book is to understand the elements that are specific to any culture. These elements include rituals, patterns, jargon and memory. All of these elements are found in any culture that we hold membership in and define how that culture behaves. According to Dr. Condeluci, for cultural shifting to be successful, under step three, a person must ask, observe and read as much as they can about the community they want to be a part of. These cultural elements are interwoven into any community that we are interested in and become key for us to know if we would like to become a member. For example, the Jazz community that we have found for the person with cerebral palsy who has become disconnected has observable ways in which it gathers. There are the rituals that members perform as they gather; there are the movements that members carry out including where they sit, and how they related with each other. There are the unique words they use to celebrate jazz and there are the memories and history of how the club first developed and who the founders and leaders have been. Again, the overall effort in step three is not focusing on the person’s disability but on the common elements of the culture. Knowing these things helps the new person better relate to the community.
The final step in cultural shifting, and the one that Condeluci holds as most critical, revolves around finding and enlisting a gatekeeper. This person is an existing member of the communities who can either formally or informally influence the culture in question. The gatekeeper can influence in a positive or negative manner and sway others to accept or reject the new person attempting to join the club. In a way the Gatekeeper acts as a welcoming agent. The person’s disability is not as important to the positive gatekeeper as the common love of jazz. Condeluci contends that the only way new people enter an existing community or culture is when a gatekeeper endorses them. All of us might remember the gatekeeper who embraced us as we looked to join or be a part of a new community.
In all his books, and workshops he conducts, Dr. Condeluci offers us a lens which we can better understand how communities operate. With cultural shifting we have a process by which all people, regardless of medical labels, are considered due to common interests.
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