All Power To The Developing!

Ep.41 Co-Creating Our World

On the 30th Anniversary of the Taos Institute, co-founder Kenneth Gergen shares the birth of social constructionism, its challenge to the assumptions of modernism, and the impact it has had both in and beyond the academy.  During this wide-ranging conversation with host Desire Wandan, Gergen discusses the practices, such as appreciative inquiry and narrative therapy, that social constructionism has helped to inspire, along with its decades-long interface and mutual influence with social therapeutics.  In this time of intense mistrust and partisanship, he looks to relationality as a way forward, pointing out, “We don’t have to agree on everything in order to create a wonderful world together.”
https://www.taosinstitute.net/

Ep.40 Performing Environmental Education

Francine Kilemann and Marcia Donadel are bringing their experience with site-specific, immersive theatre to elementary school education in Brazil.  Through Plato Cultural they lead students and teachers in creating fictional worlds in which the children become “SOS Agents” from the future tasked with helping to save the environment. The months-long performance is one in which nothing is taught in the traditional sense of the word.  Instead, the students learn through the experience of performing.  “Once we enter this fictional world,” says Kilemann, “we can ask ‘What if?’ and a range of possibilities emerge that we wouldn’t have if we had limited ourselves to the ‘facts.’”  Hosted by Desire Wandan.

Ep.39 Rhymes, Beats and Development

Nuyorican M.C., poet, and hip-hop educator Intikana shares his development as an artist, activist, and educator. He traces his journey through the economic poverty and cultural richness of the Bronx, the challenges of commercial co-optation, and bringing his revolutionary hip-hop educational techniques to young people in kindergartens, foster homes, and youth prisons.  In this wide-ranging conversation with host Desire Wandan, Initkana also discusses with deep insight the cultural and historical roots of hip-hop as an embodiment of “oppressed people trying to liberate themselves through art.”
https://www.instagram.com/intikana/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/user/IntikanaTV
https://www.star-revue.com/native-evez-the-music-of-intikhana-social-justice-rapper/

Ep.38 Therapy for and by the People

The ASSIM (Like This) Institute in Florianopolis, Brazil is dedicated to bringing therapy free or at affordable rates to those who need it the most—the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized.  Not only does ASSIM bring therapy to the people, it also provides poor people with free therapeutic training  that allows them to lead groups in their own communities.  ASSIM’s therapists and clients engage in collaborative and dialogic conversations that build on the client’s knowledge and works from the assumption that people have the resources and wisdom to transform their lives. 
 
ASSIM founder Bruno Lenzi shares his journey as a therapist and a community builder in this intimate conversation the East Side Institute’s Desire Wandan.
https://www.instagram.com/assimsc/?hl=en
https://www.assimsc.org.br/curso-de-certificacao-de-terapeutas/sobre-a-assim-sc/historia/

All Power To The Developing | JUNE 2023 UPDATE

In this time of political, ecological and emotional crisis, Developing Across Borders has emerged as a Zoom-enabled support network for activists and others around the world.  This month "All Power to the Developing" would like to draw your attention to "Border Crossers Build Their Culture."   This episode is even more relevant now than when it was first released on January 15, 2021.   It features East Side Institute director Lois Holzman  in conversation with Developing Across Borders participants Lea Cikos, Mariamalia Cob, Juan David Garzon, Steven Hart, and Morgane Masterman. Hailing from five different countries, they share how their weekly social therapeutic conversations help sustain their activism and develop their social and emotional skills. 
LINK TO EPISODE
https://eastsideinstitute.podbean.com/e/all-power-to-the-developing-ep2-feat-developing-across-borders/

Ep.37 American History, Black Heritage and Progressive Activism

Darryl Heller, lifelong progressive political activist, shares his journey from grassroots organizing in Boston and New York to becoming a labor historian, a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at  Indiana University, and director of the South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center.  “I don’t think we can realize our full humanity if we're not developing,” he tells host Desire Wandan.  “People’s" power is possible only if we keep developing.”  
https://iusbpreface.net/2022/02/23/its-my-dream-job-darryl-heller-on-the-civil-rights-heritage-center/

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.