What is the better term to use? “Integration” or “inclusion”, even “assimilation” enters the debates. It is not just a question of semantics. None fit fully and perfectly. Assimilation is our least favorite for many reasons. For one, it implies loss of any diversity. “Inclusion” implies exclusion; it implies that someone would be included into an already established, predetermined environment; it implies gate keepers – that someone has to grant entrance into this club. “Integration” has its flaws too. Usually the onus or responsibility of integration is assumed to be on the person who is new, the newcomer, the one who has “recently” arrived. “They” need to integrate into “us.”
Anecdote:
Two friends, locals, commented enthusiastically to each other how another friend, who was born in another distant country, had “integrated very well” because she speaks very good Croatian with a Zagreb accent. She also acquired some of the mannerisms to match, they observed.
Though their comment was meant as a compliment, and was well-intended, the implications of their words are scary and dangerous. As if to say that someone who is well integrated is someone where you can almost not tell the difference. As if it is about mimicry, fitting in order not to stand out.
As if to say: ‘Look like us, be like us, speak like us and then you are successfully integrated.’
In their benevolence they omit their own assumptions about what integration is, how it is done and who is involved in the process. Their comment implied that she, the newcomer, was responsible for learning how to successfully integrate.
They didn’t think about what their friend had to give up or compromise in order to be “well integrated.” They didn’t think about how their comment places the ‘I’, opposite or even against her, the ‘other.’ They didn’t think about how they too transformed through all the new encounters while being part of community-building, part of integration.

In Živi Atelje DK the term “integration” encompasses a wider, transformed meaning that involves everyone. Actually, in the beginning we shied away from using it and used to say, “We don’t talk about it, we just do it.” Now we feel a need to talk about it and contribute our experience to the semantic debate.
Coming together in 2015 to form a community, we realized that we were all unique—no surprise there. Of course we command different languages, have diverse heritage, religions or belief systems, privileges and power. With time, by sharing knowledge, exploring the world, art, life, building a community, we realized that we were all changing in various ways, to greater or lesser degrees, but as a direct result of our interactions.
We each have varied relations with the past, at different moments of our lives. Sometimes, the past is an inspiration. To many the past is often a ballast and burden dragging them down into murky depression and anxiety. However, unshackling from the past enables wings to spread and then a better future becomes within reach. We each continue to transform, sharing a common desire to build into the future.
Over time, with this way of being together, everyone was somehow being impacted. There was no “new” individual or group needing to integrate into an “old” one. No unidirectional change – “them” becoming more like “us” – rather a multitude of intersecting and always emerging relations to grow our community.

Our relational transformation materializes and manifests through the alchemistic transformation of the clay inside the kiln, the tea with spring water, the molten glass in the fire. And so for us–maybe also for you–it makes sense to see integration as something we all do together, continuously, in the creation of community, with a focus on process, not a beginning, an end, not a success, or failure, just a reality, the reality of our living.
At our art organization, our somewhat intuitive practice matured over the years into the now more formulated practice we continue to explore: Integration as a process involving everyone in the creation of an ever-evolving community, using art as a tool to bring people together through mutual accompaniment.