TRY THINK COMMUNITY CONVERSATION
SATURDAY JUNE 28, 2025 at 1:00 -3:00pm
East Hawai'i Cultural Center Main Gallery
“We believe that genuine conversation builds community, and we know that we need new ways of community building to help us face all our challenges ahead. Try Think events are opportunities for groups of diverse voices to speak and be heard. We need many voices to do this right, and all are welcome to attend.” - Robert Chang
The Try Think conversation event is part of the INSIDE exhibition, curated by Kanani Daley. The works in the exhibit were curated by its ability to engage viewers in a compassionate discourse inspired by the inner world of those impacted by incarceration, and seeks to emphasize a reflexive and reflective experience. This conversation event will be facilitated by Robert Chang, Deputy Director at the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities.
Origin Story
Try Think is a conversation-based program that began in the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Windward Oʻahu. Different than learning a specific trade or following a set curriculum, we created Try Think with the aim to be more responsive: to provide a space for incarcerated people to feel safe to share their opinions and perspectives, and to share their stories and hopes for the communities they may be returning to someday. Through the process of collective conversation, we built community inside. We expanded the Try Think program with the men at the Hālawa Correctional Facility, and again created a community together with a remarkable feeling of genuine care and relationship building. Try Think is committed to taking these powerful lessons we learned inside the facilities to our larger community: the importance of voice, the desire to feel heard and considered, the need to feel acknowledged as a whole person and as a valuable part of the community. This exhibition and event is an initiative and call for an Arts, Culture, and Literacy education program for prisons in the State of Hawai‘i; we invite your voices to be a part of a radical reimagining of our collective liberation.
