Civic Lives Project

Most people don’t learn about power, fairness, or rights in a textbook. They learn through experience—through schools, housing systems, workplaces, and everyday interactions with authority.

Civic Lives is a humanities-based storytelling and dialogue project that creates space for the exploration, reflection, and sharing of those experiences.

Through facilitated conversations and storytelling workshops, Civic Lives invites participants, particularly students, to examine how their lived experiences shape their understanding of civic life. Participants reflect on moments that influenced their views of fairness, authority, and belonging, and consider how others might interpret those same experiences differently.

This project does not tell people what to think. Instead, it creates opportunities for individuals to better understand how their perspectives are formed—and how those perspectives exist alongside others.

What This Project Does

Civic Lives brings together education, storytelling, and experience through:

Why This Matters

We all experience systems differently—but we rarely have the opportunity to reflect on those experiences or hear how others see the same world in completely different ways.

At a time when conversations about power, identity, and institutions are often polarized, Civic Lives creates something different: space for reflection, curiosity, and understanding.

What Your Support Makes Possible

Your support will help:

About the Project Lead

Civic Lives is led by Lovis Nelson-Williams, a Clinical Supervisor at the Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS) and a Political Science lecturer at Monroe University. She holds a Doctorate in Education and brings over a decade of experience working at the intersection of the criminal legal system, housing, and community-based services.

Her work focuses on how individuals make meaning of their experiences with institutions and how those experiences shape identity, perception, and civic understanding. Civic Lives builds on this work by creating structured spaces for reflection and storytelling grounded in lived experience.

About the Team

Civic Lives also collaborates with:

Support the Work

If this project resonates with you, consider supporting the first phase of Civic Lives.

Your contribution helps create opportunities for individuals to reflect on their experiences, share their stories, and better understand how we all see the world differently.