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.

You may register for either of the following two sessions, held virtually, on Zoom (Click links below to see start times in your part of the world):

____________________________________________________________________

LEADER BIOGRAPHY

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.