All Power To The Developing!

Ep.12 “Learning Is Natural, School Is Optional!” The North Star Experiment

What if young people weren’t required to go to school? What if we could invent other ways for them to learn and grow that worked just as well, or better? Meet Ken Danford, former middle school teacher, who in 1996, frustrated by the coerciveness of traditional classroom environments, founded the North Star in Sunderland, Massachusetts. There he invited teenagers to self-direct their learning experiences – without required classes, grades, or tests. In this fascinating conversation with Carrie Lobman, Danford discusses the history, methodology, practice and challenges of the North Star experiment. 

Ep.11 Bringing Hope, Joy and Justice to People Living with Dementia

Dr. Jennifer Carson, Director, Dementia Engagement, School of Community Health, Univ. of Nevada, Reno; Eileen Moncoeur, Exec. Director, Sabal Foundation, and social therapist; and Claire Molyneux, senior lecturer in Music Therapy, Anglia Ruskin Univ., UK, are on the front lines of reimagining dementia. Rejecting the biomedical “tragedy narrative,” they have embraced a playful, performatory, social-relational approach that focuses not on what is lost, but on the co-creation of possibility. They work with people with dementia, friends and families to co-create inclusive environments where all can live well and develop. Hosted by Mary Fridley.
https://www.sabal-foundation.org/
https://aru.ac.uk/people/claire-molyneux
https://www.unr.edu/public-health/centers/dementia-engagement-education-and-research-program

Ep.10 Let’s Be Weird Together & Change the World!

When the pandemic hit and tens of millions were forced into lock-down, improvisers, clowns and performance activists of all stripes stepped up to address the crisis. They organized the Global Play Brigade to bring (therapeutic) play, via Zoom and WhatsApp, into communities around the world. The Brigade now involves 160 performance activists from 50 countries — and still counting! This intimate conversation with chief organizer Cathy Salit (USA) and founding brigadiers Rita Ezenwa-Okoro (Nigeria), Jeff Gordon (Israel) and Fernanda Liberali (Brazil) explores the revolutionary power of play and performance to open doors to new ways of seeing, being and building with strangers.
http://globalplaybrigade.org/

Ep.9 Lois Holzman reads ’The Performance Movement: Out of the Fly Bottle’

Institute co-founder and director Lois Holzman reads her talk, 'The Performance Movement: The Obvious and Outrageous Way Out of the Epistemological Fly Bottle' — presented to the "Alive in the Anthropocene” virtual conference in January 2021. Curious about the fly bottle? Listen and find out what it means!

Ep.8 Afterschool Development: A New Way of Engaging Poverty

Gloria Strickland, S.V.P. and Chief Youth and Community Development Officer of the All Stars Project, Inc., shares her decades of work helping young people from poor communities of color exercise their creative muscles in all kinds of life situations to generate their own development and exercise power—and how the All Stars kept it going during the pandemic.  Hosted by Carrie Lobman. 
https://www.facebook.com/Allstarsproject/videos/1070565696687705

Ep.7 Relating to All as Givers and Builders

Makiko “Mako” Kishi — educator, professor, international aid worker and performance activist -- has worked in Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia, Central America and her native Japan with refugee communities and special-needs students to build stages for development. Mako shares her passion for creating learning environments in which everyone -- even the most “needy” — are related to as capable of giving, building and growing. Hosted by Lois Holzman.
https://www.meiji.ac.jp/cip/english/research/opinion/Makiko_Kishi.html
https://eastsideinstitute.org/about/our-people/institute-associates/institute-associatemakiko-kishi/

Ep.6 Bringing Creative Play into the College Classroom

There’s a growing movement afoot in higher education, shaking the canons of traditional pedagogy. Meet play revolutionaries Carrie Lobman, associate professor, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers Univ., and ESI’s Leader of Education and Research, and Tony Perone, asst. training professor of educational psychology at the Univ. of Washington, Tacoma, who share their pioneering efforts to bring developmental play into higher education. Hosted by Janet Wootten.

Ep.5 Bringing Play and Performance to Communities of Color

Long-time community organizers and performance activists, Allen Cox, Thecla Farrell and Sheryl Williams, share how performing with New York City’s Castillo Theatre — on-stage and off — impacted their activism and development. Hosted by Jessie Fields, MD.
 

Ep.4 A Turning Point for India’s Mentally Ill

Ishita Sanyal, the founder of Turning Point, in Kolkata, India discusses her work with people shunned and outcast because of their mental illness, work which demonstrates that psychosis need not mean the end of development.  Hosted by Dr. Lois Holzman.
www.turningpoint.org.in
https://www.facebook.com/isanyal

Ep.3 London All Stars Youth Find Their Power

Chantelle Burley and Brian Mullin, co-founders of the All Stars London, share their work with young people from London's poorest boroughs, encouraging them to perform their way to new possibilities they never imagined possible.  Hosted by Dr. Carrie Lobman.
http://www.allstarslondon.org/