what's in a name?: the ableism of dialogue walks

super quick post here!

last month i was facilitating the opening and closing of the management center’s all staff retreat and i/we stumbled on some ableism in the activity named “dialogue walks.” i’ve also heard them named “walk and talks”; still ableist.

i named that ableism in the room and folks started offering alternative names:

• convene and glean (chloe davis-carden) (may 2023)
• pivot and pair (sarah hodgdon)
• shvitz and shmooze (deb sherman)
• wonder wander (trish adobea tchume) (2 nov 2023)

in that moment, i think was really feeling the alliteration of pivot and pair so that’s what i went with for the momentary rebrand. and i’m curious! what other names for this activity do you have that doesn’t assume that all people can walk? leave a comment!

words / writing / post-processing
130w / 4min / ?min