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Designing for Empathy Workshop – II

Saturday, March 5, 2022 

9:00 am–5:00 pm EST

Registration is $125 and includes lunch and refreshments. 

Registration is required by Monday, February 28. Financial assistance is available.

Glencairn Museum and Elif M. Gökçiğdem, Ph.D. invite you to join us in person for this exciting, hands-on workshop in the inspiring setting of Glencairn Museum’s spacious Great Hall. 

 Dr. Gökçiğdem (author and founder of ONE - Organization of Networks for Empathy) will offer group instruction on theory, program development, and practical application following the Designing for Empathy™ framework. Using objects from the Glencairn Museum collection, workshop participants will develop empathy-building skills through group discussions, prototyping exercises, and facilitator feedback. 

This in-person experience is a follow-up to the first Designing for Empathy™ workshop held virtually in April 2021. The content of this second workshop is complete and stands alone. Previous workshop experience is not required. Workshop participants will receive links to resources and recordings to enhance their knowledge on empathy-building through museums and join a growing network of empathy-builders, where year-round work, cross-departmental, and institutional collaboration is encouraged. 

To register for this event click on the “Buy Your Tickets” at the bottom right of this page or click here (pdf).

For up-to-date information on Glencairn Museum’s Covid-19 guideline policies please click here. 

About the Instructor:

Elif M. Gökçiğdem, Ph.D.

Dr. Gökçiğdem is an author, thought leader, and founder of Empathy-Building Through Museums Initiative, and ONE – Organization of Networks for Empathy, a platform that enables a global community of empathy-builders to gather for exploration, collaboration, and innovation under the umbrella of Designing for Empathy™ framework, annual summit, and workshops.  

Dr. Gökçiğdem’s pioneering Empathy-Building through Museums Initiative was recognized by His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama in 2018 with an invitation to host the world’s first summit: Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion Through Museums Summit with Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. This became the seed for the annual Designing for Empathy Summit. Dr. Gökçiğdem is the author of two visionary books on the subject of empathy-building: Fostering Empathy Through Museums (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and Designing for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience (American Alliance of Museums, 2019). 

Designing for Empathy™ is a framework and a platform pioneered by Dr. Gökçiğdem in 2017, which enables multicultural and trans-disciplinary experts from around the world to collaborate across sectors to deepen our explorations, understanding, and experimentations of empathy and empathy-building with the goal of developing the best solutions that can help eliminate the empathy deficit in our world. At the heart of this effort is an intention to utilize empathy as a lens through which we can develop an understanding, care, compassion, and love towards the oneness of all beings—all of humanity and the planet.

Dr. Gökçiğdem has been invited to be an advisor to major social, cultural, innovation, and environmental projects such as: Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Center for Empathy and Visual Arts (CEVA) (2017); Building a National Architecture for Peace in America by School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University (2018); The Empathy Project: Advancing Conservation Through Empathy for Wildlife by Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium, and Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium (2019); Another AI in Art by Columbia School of Engineering, the New Museum, and the Knight Foundation (2019); Identity on the Line a multi-country project for the European Union (2020); The Chautauqua Online Designing for Empathy Workshops (2020), Chautauqua Empathy Week (2021), Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative's Empathy-Based Approaches to Solving the Climate Crisis (forthcoming 2022), and Dr. Zorana Ivcevic's “Mirror to the World: The Power of Art to Build Understanding and Creativity” research project funded by the Templeton Religion Trust (forthcoming 2022).

Dr. Gökçiğdem frequently shares her insights on empathy-building in conferences, media interviews and podcasts, as well as through her consulting services and customized workshops. She can be reached at elif@elifgokcigdem.com, and @ElifGokcigdem on social media.

Area Accomodations:

Earlier Event: February 27
Concert | Suspiro Flamenco presents Matices del Alma
Later Event: March 26
Workshop | Pysanky Ukrainian Easter Egg Painting (Weekend One)