
The Dialogue Japan Society operates the Dialogue Diversity Museum in Tokyo – a social entrepreneurial project that impressively demonstrates inclusion in the cultural sector. The museum offers interactive experiences such as Dialogue in the Dark, Dialogue in Silence or Dialogue with Timeled by people with different disabilities or older people.
Three aspects make this approach particularly innovative:
First, the programs consistently focus on participatory experiences—visitors move around in complete darkness, led by blind guides, or experience non-verbal communication with hearing-impaired hosts. This creates new perspectives, empathy, and genuine encounters.
Second, between 2020 and 2023, a total of 94 people from diverse backgrounds—including 50 visually impaired and 40 hearing-impaired individuals, as well as older people—were comprehensively trained and employed as tour guides. This not only enables cultural participation but also provides concrete career prospects for people who are often disadvantaged in the labor market.
Third, the museum operates as a social business, funding itself through admission fees, corporate training, sponsorships, and project funding. At the same time, it provides a platform for raising awareness of diversity—for example, through exhibitions like "Visible to Joy" by the White Hands Chorus NIPPON.
The Dialogue Diversity Museum is more than a museum – it is a place of genuine encounter where differences are not hidden but consciously made visible and tangible, and for this purpose it has the Zero Project Award 2025 During this year's Zero Project Conference in early March, a total of 77 innovative solutions from 45 countries were honored with a Zero Project Award in Vienna's UNO City.