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Sat, June 20 | 11:30am -2:00pm
Fee: $125|$75|$40|Sliding Scale
People are exhausted by reacting. Even people deeply committed to social change can find themselves pulled into certainty, opposition, and repetition at exactly the moment we most need creativity and collective imagination.
This workshop explores play not as escape, but as a serious human capacity for creating with others under conditions of uncertainty, conflict, and not-knowing.
Participants won’t just talk about these ideas—they’ll experience play as a way of building what does not yet exist.
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Starts Mon, Jul 6
Zoom Calls: Sundays July 12 - August 9 | 12 - 1:30pm
Fee: $195 | $145 | $75 | Sliding Scale
Crawling from the Wreckage. Join Dan Friedman for this 5-week seminar exploring the hidden assumptions shaping how we see, feel, think, rebel, and imagine. With philosophers, poets, music, video, online exchange, and Sunday Zoom conversations, we’ll crawl through the wreckage of inherited ideas and experiment with what it might mean to remix them. Will we succeed? Doubtful. Will we make discoveries? For sure!
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What Does Freedom Mean to You?
The 4th Annual Freedom Festival, (an ESI alliance) explores the history of freedom in the U.S. Juneteenth to Independence Day with multiple happenings, performances and presentations. Here's a sampling: June 18, 19, 20, 10pm–12am, Enid Pickett’s staged 3-act play reading follows a Black family’s struggle and survival from 1865 to 1963 to 2025; June 28, 8:30–11pm, Poetry by the Bay gathers in person at Bodega Bay for a mic-less open mic about freedom and what it means to us; July 3, 2–3:30pm, an online collective reading of the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglass' “What to a slave is the Fourth of July?”
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All Stars Project President-Elect Shadae McDaniel invited ESI’s Carrie Lobman, Leader of Education and Research and former All Stars national board member, to participate in a national staff training for the Development School for Youth focused on building developmental partnerships between corporate leaders and young people. The training was designed and led by Performance of a Lifetime CEO and ESI faculty member Maureen Kelly, who also joined Carrie and Senior Vice President, City Leader of All Stars Project of Dallas, Antoine Joyce-Roach in a panel conversation reflecting on how All Stars co-founders Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani shaped—and continue to shape—their worldview, personal journey, and professional lives. | | |
ESI NYC Volunteers Are Back on the Corner!
After many years away from street organizing, ESI volunteers were in the community at the annual Fabulous Fifth Avenue Fair in Brooklyn. They brought social therapeutics — stopping people with questions like, “Do you think we can create our mental health?” and “What role do play, creativity, and connection play in your life?” They sparked conversations — some brief, some curious, and some lasting as long as 20 minutes. People came to the table and browsed books, signed up to learn more, and talked with us about building community in these times. Desire Wandan, lead organizer of the street operation, said this was only the beginning! It was a powerful first step toward bringing ESI’s global work into local communities across NYC this summer.
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← Associates Luke Scaros and Luke Perone recorded a “live-letter-and-response” interview with Lois Holzman. In this clip, they share their appreciation with Lois of embracing joy and hope. | | |
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Care Pods: Collective Care in an Age of Isolation
What does collective care look like when isolation has become a worldwide epidemic? In this podcast, Minna Kim talks with host Desire Wandan about Collective Care Pods—small, ongoing groups where people support one another emotionally and grow together. Rooted in transformative justice and expanded during the pandemic, Care Pods remind us that connection is not a luxury. It’s a survival practice—and something we already know how to build.
| | | East Side Institute Initiatives & Alliances | | |
Viritual: emotional support group, 2nd Saturday of each month, at 2pm
Led by Harlem-based physician Jessie Fields, and social therapists Hugh Polk and Rachel Mickenberg. Free Registration.
In-Person: Creating Conversations Together, 3rd Wednesday of each month, at 11am
With Harlem physician Jessie Fields, community health advocate Allen Cox and educator Denise Kaalund. Free at St. Philip's Church, 204 West 134 St., NYC
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June 8: Interactive workshop and conversation led by Mary Fridley at the PeaceHealth Hospice Center, Bellingham, WA (USA) mfridley@eastsideinstitute.org
| | Create with the Power of Performing the World | | | |
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What Play Makes Possible
What does play make possible in the aftermath of war? In this moving PTW 2025 clip, Daniel Buritica, founder of Bakondo Peace Camp, reflects on how children and adults—including former soldiers and combatants—rediscover play as a way to process pain, rebuild connection, and reclaim something that war interrupted or denied. Watch this powerful glimpse into how play, improvisation, and community can create space for healing, courage, and new beginnings.
Watch the full session here
| | Friends of the East Side Institute | |
Self-Paced Course:
Provocative, unsettling, liberating, inspiring… all have been applied to the dialogues on the social construction of knowledge. The ideas have swept across the academic world and into personal and professional life. For many, they contain the ingredients for a promising life together on this planet.
In 6 modules, each with 3 short videos and reading materials, Ken Gergen introduces the transformative ideas of social construction, challenging traditional notions of objectivity, truth, and knowledge. Emphasizing that our views of reality emerge through our relationships, the course explores the powers and limitations of language, the design of dialogues, and the transformation of conflict.
| | Creative Director: Ann Green | Graphic Designer & Video Producer: Mieke Lippstreu | Tech & Video Producer: Desire Wandan | | | | |
