Anyone can host a conversation. The work is in what happens in the ninety days after it.
We talk about building bridges as though it were a moment: the gathering, the photograph, the handshake on the stage. In twenty years of this work I have learned that the photograph is the easiest part.
A bridge is a discipline. It is the follow up call six weeks later. It is remembering which of your partners needed a translator and which needed a signature. It is refusing to let a relationship end because the funding cycle ended.
Write it down. Every gap you say you want to close deserves a name, a date, and a person who is accountable for it. That is how a gesture becomes an institution.
Published in The History Issue
