Museum for the United Nations – UN Live is a borderless museum for the people and the world. We harness the power of popular culture to ignite positive global action and, ultimately, to cultivate a sense of global belonging – a 'Global We' – that unites humanity in facing our world's challenges together.  
 
Transforming this into action and to continuously inform and inspire our thinking and work, UN Live launched a global, live dialogue platform in 2022, called ‘Global We’, to enable direct dialogues with, and between, normally unheard voices from the global majority. It consists of UN Live branded, repurposed shipping containers with high-end TV and audio tech, where people from around the globe can connect with each other in facilitated conversations – across geographies, hierachies, opinions and ages. While increasing global empathy, the individual sense of agency and belonging is central to all UN Live’s popular cultural programmes.
 
From portals around the world, we facilitate dialogues on issues that matter to people and planet. We capture conversations, analyse them, and help bring the perspective shared and the overarching trends to the ‘formal leaders’ of the world, including UN leaders. 

The Global We platform has been supported by the IKEA Foundation and the Augustinus foundation, executed in collaboration with Shared Studios and hundreds of organisations in the portal locations.

A sense of global belonging

  • The world is running out of time to act on climate change – loss of biodiversity, conflicts, increasing inequality, poverty, and other global issues. We need to come together to set – and increase – the pace of positive action globally.

    Feeling a sense of global belonging and seeing oneself as part of a wave of collective, global positive change is an important step towards shaping a hopeful future. Ultimately, a sense of belonging comes from feeling connected, whether to a person, a community, or a cause. The Global We platform enables people to connect across borders, increasing the sense of global belonging.

  • Most of our portals are repurposed shipping containers with high-quality audio and video equipment and large screens. Hooking up with a portal in a different part of the world gives participants the ability to have eye-to-eye conversations, as if they are in the same room.

    • Nearly 3000 conversations

    • 10,000+ participants

    • 1.5 million+ online engagements

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Portal flexibility

  • Facilitated conversations

    Working together with MIT Cortico and 20 globally distributed facilitators across the portal network, we have developed conversation guides for facilitators to invite deep human connections around topics that matter to people.

    Watch video

  • Amplifying voices across the world

    Through our movable portals, we capture conversations, analyse them, and help bring the perspectives and the overarching trends to the ‘formal leaders’ of the world. See conversations that took place during COP27 in Sharm El-Sheik.

    Watch video

  • Workshops

    Upcycling and skill-sharing workshops have been a huge success. Portal participants have shared insights on a broad range of topics, such as ways to turn waste-products into new products. Our Global We portals continue to play a key role in sustainable innovation.

    Watch video

Deep human listening
and emerging themes

In collaboration with Cortico, a non-profit organisation that works with MIT CCC (Center for Constructive Communication), UN Live has gathered – and provides access to – over 2,900 experiences and perspectives on climate action. These stem from recorded portal conversations in 25 locations around the world since November 2022, giving us the largest ever recorded climate action conversation. UN Live portals are still running and conversations on climate and other burning issues are taking place and being recorded. The analysis of the recordings continues to add to this authentic, inclusive narrative on global issues. 

Read more about the collection here.


A public page is now available with identified themes and patterns from the conversations. 

Join the
Global We

  • As a participant, you will connect with people from different locations across the globe in a discussion on climate. Each month we initiate one question to spark conversation, such as: “What does home mean to you?” or “What makes you hopeful?”

  • Co-creator partners are local organisations with concept ideas for conversations. They are expected to work with our local facilitators to co-create session concepts that can run in the portal. Co-creator partners can be local NGOs, local affiliations of global/regional NGOs, local institutions, cultural organisations, youth groups.

  • Community engagement partners are an important part of the Global We network and leverage their networks to engage a high volume of local participants who can take part in Global We conversations. Community engagement partners can be local NGOs, local affiliations of global/regional NGOs, local institutions, cultural organisations, youth groups, tribes or media outlets, community engagement channels etc.

  • Host site partners have the ability to provide the physical space for either an indoor or outdoor portal. Host sites must have an existing role as a meeting spot for the local community, well-connected to the target audience(s). Host sites can be museums, co-working spaces, universities or other institutions that are widely accessible to all people.

We want to include as many people as possible in the Global We conversation; that means you and your community. If you are interested to learn more or want to engage with the programme, please reach out to us at: info@museumfortheun.org

  • It made me dream more of collaborating with other initiatives - trade knowledge with my colleagues and exchange practices to improve our territories.

    Calú Narcizo - Santos, Brazil

  • I learnt that there is so many little actions that we can do as a person to create better future. And everything starts from ourselves.

    Anastasia Sulemantoro - Jakarta, Indonesia

  • On one of the connections I had invited a friend and immediately after the session we made the decision to start our own NGO in Kenya to support climate action.

    Sherie Gakii - Nairobi, Kenya

  • It was amazing to connect with people around the world in this way.

    Elize Rostant - Barbados, St. Peter

  • I am very grateful for having the chance to hear stories and perspectives from for example refugee camps that I didn't know anything about, and from daily issues experienced globally. It really opened my mind, as well as enhanced my empathy and curiosity about travelling, learning and building communities.

    Mar Posada Sánchez - Colombia, Medellín

Insights from Global We conversations

Map of our portal network