Press Releases

The Village Square will be offering Tallahassee residents unique opportunities to move past the toxicity as we build a community where everyone belongs.

A unique cross-governmental discussion about where Tallahassee is as a community, where we’re going, and what challenges we face in getting there.

Liz Joyner, founder of the Village Square, has been named a finalist for this national award in honor of her tireless efforts to help overcome polarization and foster civic renewal.

The goal of this project is to provide a framework for meaningful discussions about race, politics and life in America – with a particular focus on drawing Millennials into citizenship that is engaging and authentic.

The 2016-17 series begins this year with “Tumbling
Down a Rabbit Hole: A Citizen’s Election Season
Survival Guide.”

A diverse group of local clergy affectionately known as “The God Squad” will begin its sixth year on September 23 of talking about the topics your mother warned you to never discuss in polite company: politics and religion.

Hometowns with a “sense of place” are vibrant, engaged, growing and economically successful. They are places people want to live and raise families. There are new reasons every day why this describes Tallahassee.

Pulitzer-winning biographer and historian Jon Meacham to speak on "Lessons from the American Presidency" at Florida State University, hosted by the Florida Humanities Council and co-sponsored by the Village Square, Leadership Florida and Florida State University.

On October 15, The Village Square will present humanities scholar and host of the nationally syndicated radio program The Thomas Jefferson Hour Clay Jenkinson for a special evening to celebrate American ideals, measure our progress toward a more perfect union and consider the work still to do.

Leadership Florida has presented The Village Square Tallahassee with its 2015 Florida Impact Award, recognizing the organization’s efforts to bring together those with opposing viewpoints by using civil, respectful, fact-based discourse.

We are excited to announce the creation of a Salt Lake City chapter of The Village Square.

"Seven Deadly Sins" will look at the gaping difference in the way that liberals and conservatives perceive morality – from each side of the divide - and why their inability to understand what they have in common prevents progress in addressing moral problems.

Imagine there is a giant asteroid heading to earth, expected to destroy life as we know it. We’d stop the incessant partisan bickering and do everything within our power to deflect the asteroid, right? Like in the movies?

Haidt has become an authoritative voice on what’s behind America’s deepening, angry partisan divide and what we can do to improve it. Turns out it has a lot more to do with the basics of human nature and our moral reasoning habits than we’d care to admit.

The 2016-17 series begins this year with “Tumbling
Down a Rabbit Hole: A Citizen’s Election Season
Survival Guide.”

“The Tallahassee civil rights protests aren’t just a meaningful moment in our hometown’s history. They have everything to do with where we find ourselves as a country today.”

In 1976, less than 1/4 of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. By 2004, nearly 1/2 of all voters lived in landslide counties. Americans had been moving close to others who voted just like they voted. Bishop will explain this phenomenon he calls “The Big Sort.”

It’s election season and the assaults to our values, intelligence and patience are out again in full force. If you’re among the majority of Americans who feel the tone of our civic conversation sounds like five‐year‐olds at recess, The Village Square offers you their “Citizen’s Election Season Survival Guide.”

The Village Square, FSU’s Student Life Cinema and the Tallahassee Film Festival host a special screening of the film "Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture," Audience Choice Award winner in the 2009 Tallahassee Film Festival.

In a highly competitive national grant contest, the Community Foundation of North Florida is one of 24 community and place-based foundations recently selected to receive a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

(CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND) – January 13, 2009 – President-Elect Barack Obama, in a stunning pre-inaugural moment of copycatishness, ate dinner with people he disagree with, apparently also seeking a civil conversation like the Village Square has now for over a year.

Leach’s lecture “Civility and Bridging Cultures” addresses the causes and consequences of the coarsening national political dialog. He warns “the temper and integrity of the political dialogue are more important for the cohesiveness of society than the outcome of any election.”