All Power To The Developing!

Ep.36 Theatre-Making in a Prison Community

Join host Desire Wandan in a conversation with Rivka Eckert—theatre maker, activist, and educator—about her creative work with homeless youth and police officers in Arizona and with prisoners, correctional officers, and community members in the prisons of upstate New York. Eckert, a professor in the Theatre and Dance Department at the State University of New York at Potsdam, believes that community-based theatre-making has an important role to play in “helping us get free together.”  
www.rivkarocchio.com
Instagram @rivkaeckert

Ep.35 Let’s Imagine Impossible Worlds Together

Steven Licardi spent most of his childhood and adolescence, in his words, “in-and-out of psych wards.”  He emerged from our oppressive and brutal “mental health” system with his flame of creativity burning brightly. He now shares that creativity with his clients as a social worker, social therapist and innovative poet and artist.
In this fascinating, delightfully surprising and moving conversation with host Desire Wandan, Licardi shares his commitment to helping people “play in their wounds” and use “performance to go beyond the social roles” imposed on them.  “Healing doesn't happen alone,” he says. “Healing is a process we choose to engage in with others.” The healing he talks about goes way beyond the individual. “I refuse to accept the world and it is,” says Licardi, “I want us to imagine impossible worlds together.”
http://thesvenbo.com/books
http://thesvenbo.substack.com/

Ep.34 Playworlds of Imagination and Development

Playworlds are a performatory approach to early childhood education that brings children and teachers together to create an imaginary world where they can all develop emotionally, cognitively, and socially.  Dr. Beth Ferholt of Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is one of the world’s leading practitioners and theorists of the Playworld approach. Here she comes together with Dr. Carrie Lobman, Professor of Learning and Teaching at Rutgers University and Leader, Education, and Research for the East Side Institute to explore this radically playful path to early childhood development.
Places to learn about Beth’s work and the work of The International Playworld Network and Playworld of Creative Research:
workhttps://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu/polyphonic-autobiography/section-5/chapter-14/
www.helsinki.fi/child
https://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/faculty/faculty_profile.jsp?faculty=927
https://culturalpraxis.net/imagination-and-creativity-in-vygotskys-works-seminar-series/

Ep.33 What’s So Funny About Growth and Development?

This special episode, originally released by Laugh Box, the podcast of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, brings humorists Katy Bee and Jim Bob Williams together with East Side Institute director Dr. Lois Holzman to talk, joke, and giggle about the importance of humor, fun and happiness in human development.  Guaranteed to raise some serious questions and quite a few smiles.

Ep.32 The Efficiency of Play: A powerful modality for inclusion

Based in Mexico City, Lorena Elizondo is a free-lance consultant and feminist activist who works with corporations, NGOs and community groups, using play, improvisation and performance to explore conflict and structural barriers. “Play is efficient — it may not be fast — but through play, far more voices can be heard,” she says about the power of play to spark organizational change. "Playfulness is the best tool for imagining new possibilities." Join Elizondo for a free-wheeling conversation with the Institute's Carrie Lobman, as they explore play as an inclusive, expansive modality for challenging the simplistic narratives so many are embracing in these complex times.
You can learn more about Lorena's work by visiting http://www.crucigrama.mx/
@lorebore on twitter 
@lorelizonda on instagram

Ep.31 Hip Hop Impresario, King UpRock, Exports Brooklyn-Born Beats to Communities Worldwide

Ralph Casanova, aka King Up Rock—hip hop dance pioneer, international teacher, and a community organizer with deep roots in his neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn—shares his life, art, and love for his community with host Desire Wandan.  His father was a noted conga player, his mother an expert salsa dancer and Casanova was playing drums and piano at neighborhood parties by the age of five.  As he grew up in the 1970s, there were hundreds of dance crews in Brooklyn developing moves distinct from those in the Bronx—and Casanova brought them out across New York City, the U.S., and, eventually, Europe as well.  He has brought his unique hip-hop dance to Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Switzerland, and Germany.   His Dollar Jams, parties that bring young people, dance veterans, and parents together to sustain and build community through dance, have been going on for decades in Bushwick.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/dollar-jam-charity

Ep.30 Identity, Trauma and Development in Taiwan

In 2022 the conflicted and shifting relationships between Taiwan, China, and the United States have gained worldwide attention.  Within that global frame, this intimate political conversation between East Side Institute co-founder and director Lois Holzman and Taiwanese social worker, activist, and political organizer Peiyu Kuo takes on a special significance.  As a young psychiatric social worker, Peiyu was shocked to see how mental patients were treated in her native Taiwan and decided she had “to do something different.” She has spent the next 25 years organizing, among others, people with so-called mental illness, immigrant women, and sex workers. Building on her deep organizing history, Peiyu and Holzman discuss identity politics, trauma, power, and development.
 

Ep.29 Performance of a Lifetime: Developing Leaders Through Play

Founded in 1996, Performance of a Lifetime (POAL)  has pioneered bringing play and improvisation into corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies.  Working with clients as diverse as the Bank of America and the United States Olympic Committee, Jet Blue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, POAL has invited organizational leaders to develop by playing, philosophizing and supporting each other to take risks.    Sevanne Kassarjian, POAL’s Vice President of Global Client Solutions, and Associate Partner Christian Felix, discuss Performance of a Lifetime’s history and latest developments with the East Side Institute’s Janet Wootten.
 

Ep.28 Voice Arts, New Zealand: Giving a Performatory Voice to the Elderly & Unheard

Meet East Side Institute Associate, Nicola Pauling, whose Wellington, New Zealand-based Voice Arts builds community through play and performance. Most recently, bringing performance workshops into nursing and retirement homes for the elderly, Voice Arts takes theatre games and exercises used by actors to prepare for the stage and adapts them — “seeking the outcome of joy, laughter, emotional and spiritual well-being.”  In this conversation with the Institute’s Janet Wootten, Pauling recounts the history of community engagement projects she has created with prisoners, refugees, school children — evolving an approach to drama activities where there are “no stages, no audiences, and no lines to learn.” Playing, improvising and storytelling become the means through which all can give performatory voice to the stories of their lives and grow. Pauling is active in the Global Play Brigade and a founding member of the Reimaging Dementia Coalition. 
Short Film: The Echo Made Me Smile 
Tales of Belonging produced by Voice Arts in partnership with Ryman Healthcare. ( link below)
https://vimeo.com/581385349

Ep.27 Does Dementia Have a Future? Challenging the Tragedy Narrative with Play & Poetics

Dementia, for most of us, is associated with stigma, fear and dehumanization.  What if, instead of approaching it as a dreaded medical disease that we had to fight, we collaborated with it and found ways to help those diagnosed—along with those around them—to continue to be creative and grow?  That’s exactly what John Killick has been doing for thirty years, bringing poetry and other creative arts to people with dementia in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons with remarkable and moving results.  Join Killick in conversation with Mary Fridley, a member of the East Side Institute’s faculty and Coordinator of Reimaging Dementia.
http://www.dementiapositive.co.uk/