An empty community gathering space prepared in advance for many ways of participating, with varied seating, wheelchair access, clear pathways, microphones, accessible facilities, and a screen for remote participants—suggesting inclusion designed into the space before anyone arrives.

Creating Inclusive Spaces: You Are Expected Here – Weds Evening

Creating Inclusive Spaces: You Are Expected Here

Many communities describe themselves as welcoming and inclusive. But belonging is not created by a statement on a website, a rainbow flag at the door, or the conviction that “everyone is welcome.”

And increasingly, people encounter our communities online before they ever walk through a door.

They meet us through a website, livestream, social media post, registration form, email, online class, or event listing. Long before anyone personally welcomes them, those spaces are already communicating something about whose bodies, identities, families, abilities, cultures, resources, and ways of participating we expected.

Digital spaces can also make exclusion remarkably easy to overlook. We can carefully choose inclusive language while offering videos without captions, images without descriptions, inaccessible documents, registration processes that assume everyone has the same abilities or resources, or online participation that is treated as secondary to being physically present.

And our physical spaces aren’t necessarily doing much better.

So the more important question is not simply:
“Are we welcoming?”

It is:

What have we built that lets people know they were expected in the first place?
Who is missing from our gatherings, leadership, decision-making, and public presence?
Who has to ask for access that could have been anticipated?
Who has learned to translate, minimize, explain, or defend some part of themselves in order to belong?
Whose bodies, families, cultures, abilities, identities, communication styles, or economic realities were assumed when our spaces and systems were designed?
And what happens when someone tells us that something needs to change?

RESERVE YOUR SEAT

About the Facilitator Rev. Kelly Isola

Rev. Kelly Isola is a minister, educator, consultant, and formation architect whose work explores the intersection of spirituality, embodiment, power, systems, and human belonging. She has spent decades working with congregations, nonprofit organizations, faith leaders, and interfaith communities to examine not only what they believe and value, but how those values become—or fail to become—lived experience.

Her training includes Certified Polarity Thinking™ Mastery, Certified Embodied Social Justice Advocacy, Certified Somatic Trauma Therapist, Certified Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence Master Coach, and Certified Interfaith Disaster Response Chaplain. A former chair of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, Kelly brings particular attention to the ways institutional culture, dominant norms, power, and well-intentioned spiritual language can shape who is heard, who participates, who must adapt, and who is expected from the beginning.

Her work asks a persistent question: What conditions are we creating for people to belong?

kisola@me.com
kellyisola.com

thisisntworkinglikewethinkitis.substack.com
myrtletoday.substack.com

A Two-Part
Interactive Workshop

Wednesdays
September 30 & October 7
5:30pm – 7:30pm

Registration: $100

RESERVE YOUR SPOTRESERVE YOUR SPOT

Pilgrims with Purpose™ is a global program of sacred service I developed to inspire and empower people to be active in the world in unique and sustainable ways. Every trip includes time spent touring the country, spiritual connection among our group, and compassionate action – engaging volunteers in working alongside local people in a capacity that truly serves those in the community. Together we learn to engage the stranger, to labor with, laugh with and learn about each other in order to honor the interconnectedness of all life.

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Creating Inclusive Spaces: You Are Expected Here – Weds Evening