Behind the dire headlines, there are people across the world – at the grassroots, in the academy, even within some large corporations – who are creating qualitatively new forms of life and social change. We saw it in the self-organized mashups on the internet during the pandemic and it continues in the many people and organizations creating conversation and community across ideological and other differences.

How are they doing it? Is it magic or methodology?

At the East Side Institute we think/feel it’s a bit of both…

Lois Holzman has identified these four features of some of the groundbreaking creative, developmental theories and practices.

Engage the dualisms!
Embrace unknowability!
Stop competing and start completing!
Perform dialectics!

Join Lois for a four week class/practicum where we will explore, collectively practice, and expand the impact of these features in the class and in our lives.

Zoom Sessions from 12pm-1:30pm Eastern US Time on the following dates (click on links below to see times in your part of the world):

Saturdays: October 26th (UTC-4), November 2nd (UTC-4), November 9th (UTC-5), November 16th (UTC-5), and November 23rd (UTC-5)

PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE IS A TIME CHANGE IN THE EASTERN US THAT AFFECTS THE INTERNATIONAL TIME FOR THESE SESSIONS. AGAIN YOU CAN CLICK ON THE LINKS ABOVE TO SEE TIMES IN YOUR PART OF THE WORLD

Leader Biography

Lois Holzman is founder (with Fred Newman) and director of the East Side Institute, an international center for social therapeutics and other humanizing approaches to the learning and development of people and communities. As an activist-scholar, her work is political-philosophical, community-located and international. She is a founder and the chair of the Performing the World conferences and a leader in the social change movement known as performance activism. Lois introduces performatory approaches to human development and social change to hundreds of grassroots practitioners and supports their home-grown initiatives to develop people and their communities in order to engage poverty, violence, conflict, underdevelopment and environmental destruction. Lois is the author of 10 books – including The Overweight Brain, Vygotsky at Work and Play and dozens of chapters, articles and essays, some featured in Big Ideas and Revolutionary Activity. She recently started a thought-provoking advice column on everyday developmental dilemmas, The Developmentalist.