Community Organizing

17 Apr Ambassador for Development through Performance

Posted at 18:14h in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Psychology, Psychology of Becoming, Social Therapeutics, Youth Development 2 Comments

April 17, 2010 Anyone who knows me and/or visits this site knows I'm an avid supporter of the All Stars Project and have been since it began some decades ago. The All Stars' program are exquisite applications of the social therapeutic approach to human development because they are uniquely suited to...

02 Apr Help New Yorkers Play

Posted at 18:58h in Community Organizing, Culture, Psychology of Becoming 0 Comments

April 2, 2010 You can help New Yorkers play by voting for New York Plays in the web-based grant competition Pepsi Refresh. It's the entry of the East Side Institute, the non-profit I direct. Our idea is To conduct at least 3 community PLAYgrounds throughout NYC To introduce the power of play to...

30 Mar Development Grows in Newark

Posted at 21:51h in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Outside of School, Psychology of Becoming, Youth Development 0 Comments

March 30, 2010 I don't usually post news items but I'm so thrilled about the All Stars Newark expansion plan — a partnership through which everyone grows — that I want to share it! From The Star Ledger NEWARK — The All Stars Project of New Jersey today announced a $9 million fundraising...

12 Mar Play in China

Posted at 22:29h in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Psychology of Becoming, Youth Development 8 Comments

March 12, 2010 I just returned from a week in China - specifically, Deyang, a city in the Sichuan province very hard hit by the 2008 earthquake (more than 17,000 people died and over 70,000 were injured; the schools in neighboring areas collapsed). I was there to train middle school teachers...

23 Feb Philosophizing and Clowning with Patch Adams and Fred Newman

Posted at 23:22h in Clowning, Community Organizing, Culture, Health Care, Popular Posts, Psychology of Becoming 0 Comments

February 23, 2010 [caption id="attachment_403" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Fred Newman and Patch Adams"][/caption] This past Saturday I had the privilege of hosting Patch Adams for the day between two university presentations he was giving that morning and evening. The meeting was a long time coming; Patch ("the clown who is a doctor") and I...

22 Jan Reports from the Field—Advancing Community Building through Performance

Posted at 15:06h in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Performance Movement, Psychology of Becoming, Social Therapeutics 2 Comments

January 22, 2010 In 2004 I initiated a program to support grassroots social entrepreneurs and activist-scholars whose work is too new or innovative or radical to get much support. The program is called The International Class of the East Side Institute. As of today, over 50 people from five U.S. States...

05 Jan Can Performance Change the World?

Posted at 21:54h in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Performance Movement, Psychology of Becoming 2 Comments

January 5 2010 That's the question for the sixth Performing the World conference taking place September 30-October 3 in New York City. I'm what you could call the "chief organizer" for Performing the World (PTW) conferences and community. It's a great job because there seems to be no end to the...

30 Oct Development Grows in Juárez

Posted at 22:10h in Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Performance Movement, Psychology of Becoming, Social Therapeutics, Vygotsky, Youth Development 5 Comments

October 30, 2009 These days, la Cuidad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico is pretty much known for one thing—violent crime. No denying the destruction of life and transformation of culture that’s hit this city so hard. But it is not the whole story (it never is). [caption id="attachment_321" align="alignleft" width="300"...

19 Aug Reviews for Vygotsky at Work and Play

Posted at 20:08h in Activity Theory, Community Organizing, Culture, Education, Language, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Reviews, Social Therapeutics, Vygotsky 0 Comments

August 19, 2009 Popular books, especially if they relate to current events, get reviewed as soon as they are published—and sometimes before. Not so academic books. Alas, it's typically a year before a review appears in print. So I was pleasantly surprised today to find an email in my inbox from...

11 Aug Don’t Let A Favorite Business Close

Posted at 19:04h in Community Organizing 5 Comments

August 11, 2009 Over lunch with my friend Melea Seward I told her that a favorite restaurant in my neighborhood had closed and said that if the owners had let people know there would almost certainly have been a community effort to keep it in business. We talked about the gap...