Tag Archives: Institutional change

Posts Tagged ‘Institutional change’

Cleaning in Cape Town
January 31st, 2017 | Expressive Change | Tolu Ilesanmi | 5 Comments
“Cleaning is the process of removing dirt from any space, surface, object or subject, thereby exposing beauty, potential, truth and sacredness.” Ever since I had the above epiphany, I have spoken it countless times in many places. Each time I do, I get washed by it, as the essence of cleaning is invited into the space to do its work. This happened again and again while I was in Cape Town recently for Cleaning workshops and conversations organized by […]
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Cleaning the African narrative
February 29th, 2016 | Expressive Change | Tolu Ilesanmi | 1 Comment
“My name is Tolulope Ilesanmi, I am a Cleaner. That is not a confession. It is a celebration. It is also a protest. I was a banker. That is a confession.” These were my opening words when I spoke at the Desautels African Business Initiative conference in […]
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A conversation with Dayna Cunningham
February 23rd, 2015 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock | No Comments
I’m just finishing up a fascinating six-week on-line course on Theory U. I found this 10-minute excerpt from Otto Scharmer’s interview with Dayna Cunningham particularly moving. She shares about her experience as a civil rights lawyer and how she came to understand the importance of developing an individual and collective capacity for empathy in social change work.
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Is democracy an enemy of nature?
January 27th, 2015 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock | No Comments
Are the environmental challenges we face as a planet too urgent and pervasive to be effectively dealt with through democratic means? I was surprised to read that in the wider circles of global environmental discourse, the implied (and occasionally directly expressed) response to this question is increasingly ‘yes’. Andrew Stirling, in his powerful essay ‘Emancipating Transformations’, sheds light on […]
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Calling in
November 2nd, 2014 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock | No Comments
This provocative essay on Black Girl Dangerous sheds light on how the oppressive social patterns that we’re trying to change ‘out there’ inevitably live inside us and our social movements, no matter how hard we try to chase them out. Author Ngọc Loan Trần invites fellow activists to engage with these patterns more consciously and lovingly in order to be a stronger force for change.
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Should we fight the system or be the change?
September 18th, 2014 | Expressive Change | Mark Engler & Paul Engler | 1 Comment
Once an obscure term, prefigurative politics is increasingly gaining currency, with many contemporary anarchists embracing as a core tenet the idea that, as a slogan from the Industrial Workers of the World put it, we must “build the new world in the shell of the old.” Because of this, it is useful to understand its history and dynamics. While prefigurative politics has much to offer social movements, it also contains pitfalls.
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A six month dive into expressive change
September 2nd, 2014 | Expressive Change | Josee Methot & Jess Marais | 1 Comment
Social change work is slow, and we’ve all heard stories of well-intentioned people burning out as they scramble to improve this big old world of ours. But what if this were different? In the fall of 2013, the McGill Office of Sustainability (MOOS) was fortunate to work with Organization Unbound to re-imagine the way we think about and engage in social change. With the guidance of our […]
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Exploring the link between inscaping & social innovation
February 6th, 2014 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock | No Comments
At the end of last year, we spent some time trying to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the practice of inscaping and the organizational capacity to initiate and sustain social innovation. Through the generous support of Nesta, we wrote a paper on the topic, which we presented to an international audience of […]
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Manifesting a second order revolution in Brazil
January 28th, 2014 | Expressive Change | Augusto Cuginotti | No Comments
Protest is never enough to secure a long-term vision for a country, so the straight lines of demonstrations have to be re-shaped into new patterns of participatory democracy and dialogue. This is what is happening in Brazil. Brazilians will continue to show their discontent about a country that is known for its corruption, and for the huge gaps that exist between rich and poor. But alongside […]
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Hot off the press!
November 27th, 2013 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson & Tana Paddock | 2 Comments
Check out our feature article in the latest issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review- “Social Innovation From the Inside Out”. In it we explore the concept and practice of ‘inscaping’ and highlight three organizations that we’ve learned tons from over the years: Santropol Roulant, Southwest Baltimore Charter School, and PLAN. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
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