Established in 2007, the Cultural Strategies Council (CSC) is a vehicle for interdisciplinary research, collaborative learning, and justice-centered transformation.
This work grows from the belief that society’s capacity to address complex issues, from racial injustice to climate change, relies on our ability to collaborate across difference. As such, the CSC works with a cross-section of ecosystem actors from civil society, government, social movements, and academia in diverse geographic contexts across the United States and internationally, drawing lessons from Nature’s elegant blueprint.
Soil fertility, like justice, is a dynamic condition that enables life to flourish over time. Maintaining both requires a diverse web of partners to continually learn and recalibrate how they behave in step with shifting circumstances and in dialogue with those most impacted by those changes. Collaborative learning that is context-sensitive and rooted in intercultural dialogue strengthens this adaptive capacity, enhancing the shape and substance of integrated strategies and investments and energizing the equitable distribution of power, wealth, and well-being.
Creative strategies support our work by shifting the atmosphere, enabling individuals to encounter difference, engage in meaningful dialogue, share truths, develop mutual understanding, and find common cause. This virtuous cycle generates fertile conditions for new relationships, ideas, and actions to emerge, engaging various system levers more impactfully.
Services
Organic teams or ‘councils’ are curated for each CSC engagement as required to support your unique needs and aspirations. This agile approach allows the CSC to co-create customized strategies sensitive to the dynamic nature of today’s operating environment. Our strengths include:
- Systems Transformation
- Integrated Investments
- Collaborative Learning and Capacity Strengthening
- Equity-centered Research and Evaluation
- Participatory Policy Design
- Cross-Sector and Intercultural Cooperation
- Facilitation, Teaching and Public Speaking
Founder, Kiley Arroyo has worked at the nexus of cultural rights, integrated capital, social justice, and transformational change for over two decades, with deep expertise in diverse change frameworks, principles, and practices. Kiley has published widely on progressive philanthropy, transformational change, and current policy issues. She has lectured at universities in the US and abroad on integrated capital, cultural policy, racial equity, complex systems change, and participatory democracy. She has led a diverse portfolio of engagements in the United States, internationally, and in urban, rural, and Indigenous contexts.
Kiley’s career began as a teaching artist in public schools. Learning through intercultural exchange remains central to her work. The CSC was born after a decade of work with cultural organizations McKinsey & Company, Demos, and UNESCO. Kiley has a BA in Art and Architectural History from the University of Oregon and an MA in Cultural Policy and Management from University College Dublin. She has pursued advanced training in racial justice facilitation, complexity theory, collaborative leadership, and agroecology. Kiley is a fellow with Salzburg Global and the Just Economy Institute.
Cultural Strategies Council 