“When you can turn that on its head and share completely new stories — new ways of thinking about Lincoln, new ways of thinking about leadership — then I think it’s more possible to continue discovering things about yourself.” ~ Callie Hawkins

President Lincoln’s Cottage is a historic site and museum on a 250-acre campus in Northwest Washington, D.C. It’s where Abraham Lincoln made some of his most nation-changing decisions and worked on the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln’s Cottage describes itself as “a home for brave ideas…”

And asks: How do you nurture the seeds of your own brave ideas?

Dialogic interpretation is a visitor-centered, participatory approach that invites those visitors to engage in two-way conversation where they and the interpreter ask questions.

Using dialogic interpretation, staff at Lincoln’s Cottage help people see questions that unfolded in this modest house more than 150 years ago carry forward into our lives today.

The best compliment I ever received about a tour I gave at the Cottage was: “I’ve been on tours that felt like excellent lectures — and yours felt like a conversation with a well-informed friend.”

Joan Cummins

Practicing really good active listening means you don’t know what your next question is. That can be scary for people.

Callie Hawkins

Listen to Ep. 346: Curiosity Practices at President Lincoln’s Cottage, with Callie Hawkins & Joan Cummins

We talked about helping people feel cared-for and comfortable with asking questions, balancing expertise and curiosity, the necessity of authenticity, active listening, relinquishing control and removing barriers to access, remembering what we help to discover, overcoming biased expectations, benefiting from other people’s curiosity, our hunger for grappling with ideas of leadership — and why kids ask such delicious questions.

Visit President Lincoln’s Cottage! Enjoy the “mission video” Callie mentioned.

Callie Hawkins is CEO & Executive Director of President Lincoln’s Cottage. She and her team train other museum staff in the ways of dialogic interpretation – ushering in, as they say, a new era of inclusive, empathetic interpretation.

Joan Cummins, associate director of learning initiatives, co-hosts Q&Abe, a podcast that digs into real questions from visitors to the Cottage.

You have 3 minutes. check out Derek Siver’s TED Talk “How to Start a Movement.”

I do love a good history conversation! You, too? You might enjoy these C2BC Classics: A Mile in Their Shoes: Shared History; Curiosity & a [New] American Dream, with Philippa Pham Hughes; There Are Clues Everywhere, with Amber Wiley; Curiosity & Genealogy: The Stories We Tell, with Jennifer Mendelsohn; Curious About Our Roots, with Wilma Jones; A Double Take on Lynching, with Susan Strasser & Marcia E. Cole; and Oral History, with Valeria Gelman.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Over the Fence” by Delray, via  Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo of Lincoln’s Cottage by Brian Rimm, used with permission.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.