United in Diversity: building an inclusive community

How do you build a community where everyone can be themselves while feeling connected to others? During this 75-minute workshop, you’ll be introduced to the concept of mutual integration in an accessible way. We will focus on what mutual integration means in our everyday lives.

What changes if we don’t see integration as adapting, but as a shared journey? What opportunities does it offer, and what challenges do we face? Through a collaborative thought experiment, we will then take on the challenge: what would a truly equitable, integrated community look like? What do people need to form a community where differences do not disappear, but coexist? We will map this community, creating a live, visual map of ideas, values, and conditions needed to build an inclusive community together.

This workshop invites connection, imagination, and new perspectives on living together—moving away from the question of how we can become more alike, and focusing instead on how we can coexist without losing our unique identity.

Sociologists Fatiha El-Hajjari, Fenneke Wekker and political scientist Lea Klarenbeek are committed to make existing social-scientific knowledge development more accessible, equitable and justified in the Netherlands. Their areas of expertise include inclusion and exclusion, a sense of belonging, integration and the empowerment of marginalised groups. KennisMakers works together with grassroots organizations, policymakers, social-civic institutions and those interested in broadening their vision and who want to contribute to a more realistic and multifaceted view of Dutch society.