Increased diversity is a reality in our professions, organizations, donors, and patrons requiring effective intercultural awareness, knowledge, interpersonal skills when engaging people of different backgrounds, assumptions, beliefs, values, and behaviors. Most cultural heritage professionals are confident they work well with cultures unlike their own and then find themselves at a loss when intercultural relationships are non-existent, strained, or damaged. How you define and incorporate cultural competency in your institution requires the ability to function with awareness, knowledge, and interpersonal skill when engaging people of different backgrounds, assumptions, beliefs, values, and behaviors. In this workshop you’ll be challenged to examine personal perceptions that might surprise you and strategies that will increase your ability to to implement these functions personally and at the organizational level.

Creating organizations that are culturally competent is not an altruistic wish, but rather a business strategy to ensure our workforce reflects, represents, and is responsive to the communities with whom we collaborate and serve and perhaps more critically, how we shape our programs, exhibits, and collections.

While cultural competency has long been incorporated into the medical disciplines and the fields of psychology and social work they have been slow to enter the cultural heritage professions. In the past decade, acceptance of its principles has been evident through several initiatives to address long recognized shortcomings in our professions. Cultural competency goes beyond training the traditionally dominant culture(s) to work with underrepresented cultures, but rather a framework for all to employ toward understanding and communicating with those whose experiences, perspectives, and positions are unlike their own.

This workshop provides the skills to employ cultural competency and the stages individuals and organizations can implement to improve relations with internal and external communities.

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to:

• Define CC and how its integration within three levels is required to be successful
• Examine critically your interaction with people of different cultures and how they can be affected by practicing CC
  
• Identify the six stages and where you and your organization are on the CC continuum
• Identify the multi-level model for implementing CC
• Design methods to improve relations with internal and external communities
• Combine cultural-mindedness with culturally centered communication skills for effective relationships with all people forming the basis for culturally competent organizations, communities and societies

You can also watch the webinar Helen presented on February 16, 2023, Beyond checking the EEO box: Cultural Competency, the first step in DEIA to hear Helen discuss the importance of Cultural Competency as a business strategy to ensure our workforce reflects, represents, and is responsive to the communities with whom we collaborate and serve.