Zdravo da Ste Weekend

December 29, 2011

I returned from Serbia a few weeks ago, energized from six very performatory days with friends old and new. Nearly every year since 1997 as winter begins I’ve made the journey to work and play with the extraordinary people of Zdravo da Ste (“Hi Neighbor”). They’re a group of psychologists, educators, social and youth workers who’ve created a Vygotskian-influenced approach to performance and group creativity, and take it into collective centers, schools and cultural institutions in villages, towns and cities across the country. Above all, they are developmentalists. They’ve devised elegantly simple ways to engage children, youth and adults in creating common joint activity—whether that takes a musical, artistic, poetic, dance, performance or conversational form, there is no goal external to the activity. Such a non-instrumental, tool-and-result method is dear to my heart.

So are the hundred or so people of Zdravo da Ste that I have come to know through the common joint activity we create one weekend a year. We have great love for each other as both comrades and family members can—love grown from mutual passion for a better world, fierce commitment to each other, and ever-growing understanding of and respect for each other’s uniqueness born of historical and cultural difference.

This year, we spent the weekend Vrnjacka Banja—a small town in the south known for its healing mineral waters—in workshops creating performances around the topic of identity as an individual and collective process. On Monday, workshop leaders (myself, Lina Kostarova-Unkovska, Paul Murray and Tim Prentki) brought the topic and conversation to Belgrade, as panelists hosted by psychologist Bojana Skorc at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Belgrade.

In 2009 Zdravo da Ste and publisher Dragan Stojkovic of MOSTART released the Serbian edition of Fred Newman’s Let’s Develop! A Guide to Continuous Personal Growth (translated by Bojana and Zdravo da Ste founder psychologist Vesna Ogjenovic). Social workers, psychologists, youth workers and educators in Serbia and other countries of the former Yugoslavia have a way to be introduced to Newman, social therapeutics, the performatory approach developed and practiced at the Institute, and to Zdravo da Ste’s unique way of generating development.

While in Serbia, I also led two workshops, one in Belgrade and the other in Novi Sad, organized by 2010 graduates of the Institute’s International Class Tamara Borovica, Bojan Drmonjic, Tamara Maksic and Milovan Savic. It was fun and challenging and especially rewarding to spend several hours creating with nearly 60 new performance playmates. I hope to see many of them, along with my old Zdravo da Ste friends, in New York City in October at Performing the World 2012: Can Performance Save the World?

Regarding the topic of identity, I invited those in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Vrnjacka Banja to challenge the hold our societal identities have on us by embracing (or, at a minimum, considering) our historical “identity” as creators and transformers of how things happen to be at any given societal place and time. It’s a common joint activity the world needs very much right now.

Part of a Performance in Nov Sad

New Performers in Belgrade

Please check out the latest issue of the East Side Institute’s newsletter, Reports from the Field, for news on what our friends, colleagues and alumni are up to. You’ll hear from Annalie Pistorius and her new social therapy practice in Pretoria South Africa, the synergy between Elina Lampert-Shepel and Brazilian educators at a Vygotsky research conference, and much more.

May 31, 2011

May is one of my favorite months of the year, with light lasting into the evening hours, baby green tree buds turning into adult green leaves, and bursts of color (both flowers and people’s clothing) dotting the city streets. But this year I spent the middle of the month far far away from New York City’s spring awakening. I was in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh conducting workshops on effective education for the 21st century, which introduced university faculty and students to performatory and playful learning and development approaches. And while there was no feel of spring in the very hot and very humid city air, the human awakening to the joy and intimacy of creating together was palpable.

I was invited to Dhaka by Daffodil International University, instigated by Syed Mizanur Rahman (“Raju”), an economist and drama educator who heads up the university’s Career Development Center. As a graduate of the East Side Institute’s International Class and participant in our Performing the World conferences, Raju has embraced performance as how to live one’s life developmentally and, being in a position to breathe life into the rigid and static British-based educational system of his country, he asked to partner with the Institute to help advance his work and socialize performance broadly within the school’s community. I was happy to agree and added my workshop facilitation partner Carrie Lobman, who is the Institute’s director of pedagogy and on the faculty of Rutgers University School of Education, as co-leader of the training week.

All told, Carrie and I worked and played with about 200 students, faculty and administrative personnel in six different workshops. Our broad thematic was that the shift underway from past centuries to the 21^st century is from questions about things (What is “X”?) to questions about process (How does “X” work?). We had prepared an overall plan of discussion topics and improv exercises but needed to hear what the specific issues were that people wanted to work on so we could work off them. Students and faculty alike were unhappy with the formality and rote nature of the learning environment they felt compelled to recreate and said they wanted to change. We worked with each group offering ways they could do so as well as, perhaps more important, ways they could create together outside the formal classrooms (which would, we believed, have a big impact on what happened in the classrooms). Working with the students was pure joy! They threw themselves into doing so many things they never dreamed they could do together. The faculty was a more conflicted grouping. While many willingly went along with our invitations to create and imagine, some could not move beyond “tell us exactly what to do”—rejecting the very stance we were trying to get them to consider giving up, holding on to their own authority as experts and the institutional authority of knowing.

We also met with the high-level dignitaries of the university, had a lovely dinner with the chair of the board of the Daffodil Group (founders of the University), and watched a moving performance by the Daffodil All Stars of a play written by Raju.

Raju and his assistant, Md. Ziaul Haque Sumon (Sumon), were exceptional hosts and great organizers—gracious, relaxed, reassuring and proud of what they’re doing and our relationship. In addition to our work at Daffodil, they took us to Raju’s alma mater, Jahangimagar University, where we were treated to a great performance by the current members of the theatrical group he founded there many years ago; to the new campus site of Daffodil outside of the city, where this August Raju and Sumon will orient the 500 incoming students (performatorily) to university life; to villages and monuments and a heartbreakingly poor section of the city to meet a remarkable woman who cares for children of sex workers.

Back in New York, May’s spring is transitioning to June’s summer and I to the luxuries of American life and to the work at hand. I feel humbled and privileged that this work now includes this new relationship with Daffodil University, dozens of new friends, and the opportunity to contribute in unknowable ways to the development of the people of Bangladesh.

April 20, 2011

One evening while studying in England, a young Ugandan man named Peter Nsubuga watched a BBC documentary in the home he was staying. The program was “Children of Africa.” Peter was no stranger to the scenes he watched, having grown up in the very conditions shown on the screen. He felt deeply moved by the film, so much so that he returned home “to give my heart”—he says—to help children and youth from his home village. Peter talked to local community leaders and officials about his desire to inspire, support, and promote youth engagement and the role of young people as leaders of positive social change. In 2007, he got just enough support to found Hope for Youth-Uganda and supply food, clothing and education to a small number of children.

In 2008, Peter learned of the training opportunity in the social therapeutic approach to learning, development and community building provided by the East Side Institute. He applied, I interviewed him (on Skype), and he arrived in NYC in October to begin the program’s first residency. During 2008-2009 (and three visits to NYC for the program’s residency periods), Peter advanced his vision to include therapeutic and cultural developmental activities. He thought that social therapy would greatly help build community and give emotional support to families, most of which have been fragmented by the death of one or both parents from AIDS. He also was eager to bring the All Stars Project performance-based development approach to the young people to help them grow.

So, over the next two years, Peter began educational and therapeutic groups for women and for the grandparents and other guardians of children orphaned by AIDS as well as  “You Matter” support groups for girls. Hope for Youth-Uganda also built a school, installed a new water tank to insure safe drinking water; planted an orange grove, and acquired donated school supplies.

Last month, on the afternoon of March 26, Hope for Youth-Uganda held its first All Stars Talent Show. Peter told me that the show began in a large field, with children, many orphaned by AIDS, “telling stories—which were so emotional that many could not hold their tears back. Later we marched around the surrounding communities with the teens singing songs and ended in the sports field where they moved around to form a star.”

It thrills me that Peter and his organization are creating conditions for Ugandan youth to create their own cultural development. He joins the growing ranks of educational innovators—those who know the importance and value of in-school education in underdeveloped and developing societies but who, at the same time, recognize the transformative power of informal learning environments that engage and empower. Watch videos of Sugata Mitra and Charles Leadbeater to learn more.

I just spent two weeks with a community activist who organizes self-help groups for women in rural India, two courageous Pakistani women educators, an American cell biologist who leads improv workshops for scientists, two youth workers from Serbia, and two university-based teacher educators also from Serbia. The Institute’ International Class program is what brought these people together. They were in NYC for their second residency, which immersed them in the life of the Institute and the All Stars Project and the broader community of which these two organizations are a part. They had seminars, conversations and workshops, participated in ongoing events, observed social therapy groups, did some street organizing in Harlem, were guests at a donor reception, and were featured speakers at “International Conversation: Learning, Development and Performance around the World,” sponsored by the Global Outreach department of the All Stars UX. This event brought news of creative, important development work first hand to ordinary New Yorkers who rarely, if ever, get the chance to dialogue on culture and social change with people from other countries.

There are many wonderful things about these two weeks—being part of the learning and development of these particular people as they encounter so much that is new—and try to do it together; the memorable moments of shared “aha!”, humor and sadness; the work and play that goes into building new relationships. But what I woke up thinking about today was how our time together changed how I see what my colleagues and I do. And how great an experience that is—to have the opportunity to see and hear through others’ eyes and ears. To share your understanding of what you’re doing and its political and intellectual roots and hear your own words as you’ve never heard them before. To talk about an idea or concept or practice and experience others making new meaning (or no meaning) with it. To spend an hour with someone you have known and worked with for thirty years and get to know them all over again through the conversation they are having with people they have just met. To walk through spaces you walk through every day and notice things you’ve long forgotten were there. I realize that what’s so special about the International Class residency periods for me is that they’re an extended period of making the familiar strange.

That got me thinking about teaching/learning. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Please help me publicize a unique program—The International Class. I began this seven years ago and had no idea how much it would help me and all its participants grow, or how powerful the impact would be on community organizers and talented educators and peformers, or what a continuous activity of generating hope it would be.

“The activity based-theory, the performative approach, and the emphasis in community building are the key elements of a psychology that blurs the distinctions between clinic, politics and the arts.” Murilo Moscheta, psychologist and therapist, Brazil

It’s a Global Learning Community

Since 2004, more than 60 community and university based practitioners from across the US and 16 other countries have enrolled in The International Class of the East Side Institute. Among them are psychologists from India, Brazil and Denmark; applied theatre practitioners from Kenya and Canada; educators, scientists and doctors from Pakistan, Serbia and the United States; community organizers from Uganda and Taiwan; psychotherapists from South Africa and Argentina; and youth workers from Nicaragua and Mexico.

Coming from different places and professions, they share a desire to change the world—and an eagerness to take advantage of the unique opportunity The International Class offers them to create a global support network, to engage the philosophical, political and psychological issues of their practice, and to study and train as developmentalists with the creators of social therapeutic methodology.

It’s a Zone of Development

The International Class is a course of study in postmodern and activity-theoretic approaches to human development and learning. Emphasis is on social therapeutics, a methodology utilized in diverse mental health, educational, youth development and community organizing settings in the US and internationally. A recognized approach within both the postmodern and the cultural-historical activity theory movements in psychology, psychotherapy, education and community and organizational development, social therapeutics is a philosophically informed, practically oriented method in which human beings are related to as creators of their culture and ensemble performers of their lives.

Designed and led by Institute director Lois Holzman, the program provides a unique opportunity for practitioners and scholars from the US and countries around the world to

• study together and learn the Institute’s cutting edge developmental methodology
• work directly with Holzman, social therapy’s creator Fred Newman, leading practitioners Lenora Fulani, Christine LaCerva and Carrie Lobman, and others
• participate in innovative educational, cultural and community-building programs throughout New York City,
• build ties and support for themselves and their communities.

In this creative playground/postmodern academy, participants build a dynamic zone of development in which they can engage the philosophical, political and psychological questions emerging from their practice.

Being part of a group that is intelligent, talented, diverse and committed to making a difference in their own parts of the world has revolutionized my work, my personal growth, and my way of relating with others. Introducing performance to our after school programs with kids, our work with youth groups, and our broader community work has opened new possibilities for the growth of everyone. Miguel Cortez, youth worker and psychotherapist, CASA, Juarez Mexico

The International Class has made me learn to challenge some of my old beliefs and to peel off the rigid self-image that we all try to portray in our life. The cultural and economic differences of all the countries of the student have made us get an even broader viewpoint on all the topics that were discussed. Ishita Sanyal, psychologist, Turning Point, Calcutta India

It’s different from other learning processes and institutions. It is an enjoyable, enthusiastic, academic environment where you may develop your emotions, thinking and speech. It is a zone where you may improve your human skills to help others to perform a better world. Ignacio Dalton, educational researcher, Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires Argentina

For the last eight years, I have studied welfare policy and have been an advocate for more humane services in New York City. I applied to The International Class out of recognition that my understanding of poverty was limited – and in some ways, provincial. My colleagues taught me about anti-poverty programs around the world, which helped to broaden my understanding. As an American and an anti-poverty advocate, this experience has been invaluable. Becca Widom, sociologist and anti-poverty advocate, New York New York

It Has a Flexible Structure and Curriculum

The ten-month program combines residencies in New York City and seminars, supervision and project development sessions conducted online. Students come together to work with Institute faculty and others in a broad development community and advance their programs and research.

Residencies. The International Class meets at the Institute three times during the academic year (in September, February and June) to work together as a group with Institute faculty and associates. Site visits, observations, participant observations and experiential learning activities supplement daily seminar activity.

At Home. In between residencies, students study the social therapeutic method in relation to socio-cultural activity theory, theories of performance, postmodernism, group process and community development. Learning formats include on-line seminars, mentoring, dialogues with guest colleagues of the Institute, supervision and conference calls with faculty and mentors.

The International Class is cross-disciplinary and open to practitioners and scholars with a broad range of educational and life experiences—and a passion for innovation. Applications for the 2011-2012 program will be accepted through May 2011. Tuition is $3400. A limited number of full and partial scholarships covering tuition are available.

For more information, including dates, applications and scholarship forms, contact: Lois Holzman, Director, East Side Institute, email lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org, tel. 212-941-8906, ext. 324. To read more about the program and its graduates, or to download an application, go to http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/IC.html

If you need a pick-me-up today, something to inspire you, maybe this will do the trick:

Ishita Sanyal is founder of the Calcutta-based grassroots mental health group, Turning Point, and an avid promoter and proselytizer on behalf of a social therapeutic approach to mental health. On a subcontinent where there are only 600 practicing clinical psychologists and a devastating shortage of mental health services, Ishita advocates for a group/community-based, performance therapeutic practice everywhere she goes. She recently registered “Social Therapy India” as the official organizational platform in India.

Ishita has introduced therapy games with mothers and children struggling with rigid social roles and rules. Mothers tend to watch others play, for example, but not play themselves. Performance helps them take the state, she reports. And in her group therapy work at Turning Point, Ishita reports how the improv work has helped her “discover new capacities of the clients, simultaneously as they discover new capacities in themselves.” She describes, for example, a young woman who rarely spoke with others.  “As she struggled to perform in the dramatic play,” says Ishita, “and as the group showed its appreciation by enthusiastically applauding, there was a change in her performance… After some time, she began for the first time to speak with other group members.”

Read about more people like Ishita, graduates of a unique program focusing on the performance of community, in

In December I was in Serbia for the annual meeting of  Zdravo da Ste, a community of a hundred or so Vygotskian-influenced educators, psychologists, social workers and artists who bring the joy of pointless performance to children and adults through workshops and ongoing programs. We spent the weekend in Golubac, a village on the Danube across from Romania, in music, poetry, theatre, dance and conversation workshops—followed by performances from each workshop group. On Monday some of us workshop leaders led a panel on “Activity, Art, Development” at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Belgrade.

In Golubac, about a hundred adults, children and teens split into workshops led by talented and spirited “creatives”—Kayoko Yamasaki, Vojislav Karanovic,Vera Obradovic, Vladimir Komad, Dusan Jankovic, Wilfried Kerntke, Tim Prentki, June Boyce-Tillman, Paul Murray and me. Each workshop group, and the body as a whole, were wonderful Zones of Proximal Development (to use Vygotsky’s language) and equally wonderful Zones of People’s Development (to use Zdravo da Ste’s Vesna Ognjenovic’s langauge)—creating with our considerable diversity. In Belgrade about 80 faculty and students from the University, as well as various artists, got to hear diverse views on the the role of art, culture and creativity in social change efforts related to power and development.

In Belgrade I also spent time with current members of the Institute’s International Class—Tamara Borovica, Bojan Drmonjic,Tamara Nikolic Maksic and Milovan Savic. It was a special treat to create conversation with them in their own country. I also reconnected with Vera Erac (International Class alumna) and Aleksandra Jelic and heard of the latest activities of their group, ApsArt.

I’ve been spending a long winter weekend with the Zdravo da Ste community nearly every year since the late 1990s, and while I hope to someday see Belgrade and its surrounds in other than winter grey, my friends and their work and play never fail to bring sunshine to my life.

“My parents had 3 children. My older brother became an artist. My younger brother became actor, director and theater producer. I became a psychologist.  Maybe, that is why I am so invested in understanding psychology as an artistic creation. It is very important for me to build a creative, poetic and artistic psychology. My challenge is to use this art as a way for political and historical transformation.”

This is Murilo Moscheta speaking. He is a young Brazilian psychologist who I had  the plasure of working with when he was a student in the Institute’s International Class last year. Murilo returned to Brazil and is currently seeking ways to construct a meaningful, developmental practice. The above excerpt is from a speech he gave to psychology students in Brazil this past summer. I recommend reading his talk, psychologist or artist, which speaks to psychologists-to be in any country.

I “teach” online a lot and I love it. I’ve done a course on Social Therapeutics at Massey University (evidently in New Zealand English, though, a “course” is called a “paper”) and just launched one through the Zur Institute for 6 CEUs. But the bulk of my online teaching is through the East Side Institute—our introductory courses, online certificate program, and in-person/online combo called The International Class.

More of our faculty are offering online courses too, and I work with them on how to do it. I tell them (and hopefully help them) to see an online course as a completely new opportunity for social creativity.

I’ve learned from these newbies some of the things that “seduce” them into relating to the course as if it’s a face-to-face, real time learning environment that just happens to not be face-to-face or real time! Like silence (i.e., no posts) for a few days, or a response to a reading that is very far from what you expect, or a conversational thread that seems “off topic.” In a  regular course, such things are no big deal, but online they can loom large indeed, sometimes enough to worry the course leader into trying to control what will happen, too quickly correct a misunderstanding, ask a lot of questions, or fill in a silence with erudtion—all of which don’t make good use of the uniqueness of the online learning environment.

In my experience, the slowness (or timelessness) of online discussion makes it easier to respond to the whole group even as you are responding to a particular person. You (and everyone else) can read and re-read what people have written, and see the process by which the conversation is being created. Someone can always revisit a topic, something that’s harder to do in regular courses. You can also play with each other’s posts. I’ve had students take a line or two from different people’s posts and create a new post that then becomes part of the mix (and can create another “student” in the course).

Taking playful initiative seems easier online. So does sharing. I’ve found that students tend to be more giving of their life experiences in ways that create a safe place for playing with the most challenging theoretical material. On their own, some have videotaped conversations with friends or colleagues on the readings and posted them for us to see and comment on. Others describe readings and web material that excite them and recommend them to everyone. Others create scenes, take photos, draw pictures.

If you want help with the online environment or have a story to share, post a comment!