Teen Dialogue Accelerator
Ten libraries from across the country each paired a staff member with a youth fellow from their own community to host small-group conversations with local teens on the issues that matter to them. Connected as a national cohort, they supported each other along the way. These are some of their reflections on what that work has felt like.
“It adds to the reputation of what the library is doing in town. It’s becoming more understood that having conversations – civic dialogue – is something we do.”
– Dianne Connery, Pottsboro Public Library, Texas
The Teen Dialogue Accelerator is a national program that pairs public libraries with local youth fellows to host small-group recorded conversations with teens in their communities. Each library team — one staff member and one youth fellow from that same community — designs and leads conversations on topics that matter to young people: civic identity, democracy, immigration, AI, the future of work, and more.
The program launched in fall 2025 with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, selecting ten public libraries across the country — urban, rural, suburban, and tribal — to pilot the model. Library staff and youth fellows received training and support from Cortico to design conversation guides, host and record small-group conversations, and surface insights from what they heard.
This spring (2026), the full cohort gathered at the MIT Media Lab for an in-person intensive — the first time the library teams had met each other face to face. Teams presented the work they’d been building in their communities and connected across libraries.
Some of these same libraries are now part of the American Conversation Project this summer, carrying their civic dialogue work forward into the 2026 Civic Season.
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