Culture

24 May Words to Ponder #51

Posted at 20:06h in Community Organizing, Culture, Politics, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 4 Comments

Today's words to ponder come from David Graeber, American anthropologist and anarchist social and political activist. He died in 2020. “At a moment when the capitalists’ collective refusal to even consider rethinking any of their basic assumption about the world might well mean not just the death of capitalism, but...

04 May Words to Ponder #50

Posted at 02:52h in Culture, Language, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

More words from Raoul Vaneigem Everything that human beings do and undo passes through the mediation of language. The semantic realm is one of the main battlefields in the struggle between the will to live and the spirit of submission. The fight is unfair. Words serve Authority more faithfully than most...

26 Apr (Mis)Shapers of Our Lives

Posted at 15:30h in Creativity, Culture, Human Development, Philosophy, Psychology of Becoming 0 Comments

We humans—with our species exceptionalism, our arrogance, our smarts and our not so smarts, our bloated brains and shrinking hearts, our degenerating ranges of sight and sound, the cooling of our touch, and the freezing of our feelings—are in deep, deep trouble. It is a trouble of our own making....

18 Apr Words to Ponder #49

Posted at 19:43h in Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

Today's words are from Belgian radical philosopher Raoul Vaneigem's influential (in the 1960s) book The Revolution of Everyday Life. “People are far too unperturbed, it seems to me, by the way in which the world, in certain periods, assumes the forms of the prevailing metaphysics. No matter how bizarre belief in...

15 Apr A Developmentalist’s Practice

Posted at 00:40h in Creativity, Culture, Events, Human Development, Psychology of Becoming, The Developmentalist 0 Comments

Join me on May 2 or May 7 depending on the time that's convenient for you. A developmentalist is a person with whom you can create new possibilities. In this half-day workshop, participants will explore three features of a developmentalist’s practice and how you might build ‘stages’ for development in your practice...

12 Apr Improvising With and In

Posted at 17:00h in Applied Theatre, Creativity, Culture, Education, Human Development, Learning Environments, Outside of School, Play, Psychology of Becoming, Theatre 2 Comments

Since 2016, I’ve been editor of a series of books—Studies in Play, Performance, Learning and Development—published by Palgrave Macmillan. I’m proud of the nine books I helped to get written and published. Every one of them has made important contributions within and across education, psychology, youth development and theatre/performance studies,...

13 Mar Words to Ponder #48

Posted at 17:46h in Community Organizing, Creativity, Culture, Human Development, Performance Movement, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

These Words to Ponder are those of performance activist Hector Aristizabal, taken from a wonderful interview with him at Creative Art Space. To be creative is to participate consciously in the ongoing creation of the world. Creativity is not primarily about producing art. It is about entering into relationship with life...

11 Mar Appreciating Vygotsky … and Writing Letters

Posted at 20:38h in Culture, Education, Human Development, Learning Environments, Psychology of Becoming, Vygotsky 0 Comments

If you're a reader of The Developmentalist, my "developmental" advice column, you know I'm a fan of writing letters. They are a particular way of organizing your relationship with the person you're writing to and with yourself. Writing a letter and never sending it can be just as good as...

07 Feb More Dilemmas! More Letters!

Posted at 15:57h in Creativity, Culture, Human Development, Play, Psychology of Becoming, The Developmentalist 0 Comments

Greetings All, As I hope you know, I gathered many of the letters and responses that appeared in this column into a book, A Developmentalist's Guide to Better Mental Health: Navigating Everyday Life Dilemmas. (My editor at Routledge urged that title, although I would have gone with something more provocative.) If you...