On Community Building, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Curling Clubs and Beyond

In this episode, Fall 2024 ICS Faculty Fellow Dr. Scott Piroth, Teaching Professor in the Department of Political Sciences at BGSU and longtime curling enthusiast, converses with Team USA curling athlete Laura Dwyer about issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in curling clubs both in Canada and the US. Their conversation highlights the need for better quality instruction especially for adaptive curlers, from peoples with a knee injury to peoples on wheelchairs, while acknowledging that curling clubs offer excellent opportunities to peoples with different abilities, as Laura's experience demonstrates. At the same time, Dr. Piroth brings attention to the fact that curling clubs see themselves as welcoming, inclusive spaces and, yet, they are not aware of who is not there, especially in terms of race and ethnicity. Conversely, he considers how Putnam's notion of thin trust may help us understand not just why curlers generally believe that peoples they encounter are trustworthy, but how their approach to trust and community can be applied outside of the world of curling.