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A What?

A person who examines—and invites others to examine—the taken-for-granted ways of the world. A person who helps us see not just products and outcomes but shines light on process and how we, as individuals, communities and as a species do what we do. A person who invites others to play with what irks us, confuses us, bewilders us, makes us feel ground down, lost, stuck, sad, hurt, and worse. A person with whom you can always create new possibilities.

In this two-and-a-half-hour workshop, Institute director Lois Holzman will introduce you to the conceptual framework and share four features of a developmentalist’s practice. You will be invited to try these on and have ample time to practice performing as developmentalists alongside Lois.

Saturday, May 17, 10:30 AM-1:00 PM (EDT / UTC-4)

OR

Thursday, May 22, 7:00-9:30 PM (EDT / UTC-4)

Fee: $100 | $50 | $25 | Pay What You Can

Lois Holzman's  upcoming book, A Developmentalist’s Guide to Better Mental Health: Navigating Everyday Life Dilemmas (Routledge, Spring 2025) offers a performance turn to subjective pain and emotional quandary. She is a developmental psychologist and transformational change methodologist, who over the course of decades of activism, has helped social change agents (educators, coaches, therapists, non-profit leaders, academics, et al.), create performatory environments that stir hope and joy, and open portals of possibility. Along with East Side Institute co-founder and public philosopher Fred Newman, Holzman has challenged the epistemological bias of the social sciences, advancing a “non-knowing growing,” playful/performatory/philosophical alternative. In her seminal text with Newman,The End of Knowing, and its general audience companion text, The Overweight Brain: How Our Obsession with Knowing Keeps Us from Getting Smart Enough to Make a Better World, Lois introduces a Wittgenstein/Vygotsky synthesis that activist colleagues have “made their own,” to grow their communities. She supports them to become “developmentalists,” guiding them via playful/philosophical discourse. Lois is founder and chair of the Performing the World conferences (since 2001) and a chief organizer among the growing performance activism movement. She is the author or editor of 11 books – including Performing Psychology, Unscientific Psychology, and Vygotsky at Work and Play.