The East Side Institute’s flagship program, The International Class, is a non-ideological maker-space advancing a cultural/performatory approach to leadership development and social activism. Class participants hail from all walks of life and cultures and are passionate about social change. They are supported to create with their cohort new ways of connecting and building that generate possibilities for growth. I hope you’ll consider joining us.
Some History
The independently funded and supported East Side Institute offers aspiring social change agents the opportunity to hone practical-critical tools that support transformatory social change. Over four decades, it has attracted many intrigued by a performative / cultural approach to what ails our communities.
Founded in 1985, by public philosopher and revolutionary tool-maker, Fred Newman, and activist developmental psychologist and Vygotskian, Lois Holzman, the Institute created a therapeutic practice of method (social therapeutics) and a new understanding of development that relates to people of all ages and life circumstances as social performers and creators of their lives.
Rooted in community organizing since the 1970s, Newman and Holzman drew on the conceptual discoveries of Karl Marx (his methodological writings on the unity of personal-change and world-change); Ludwig Wittgenstein (his understanding of language as activity); and iconoclast developmentalist Lev Vygotsky (his search for method and challenge to the passivity of traditional models of human development).
In its first two decades, this orientation catalyzed a number of self-sustaining, innovative practices including the national youth development non-profit, the All Stars Project; a non-diagnostic, group therapy, social therapy; and an organizational training firm, Performance of a Lifetime, using performance and skills of improv to help business teams be more collaborative and innovative. Dozens more have since come into being.
Building a Community of Performance Activists
With the advent of the internet in the mid-1990s, people living oceans apart came to learn about one another’s work and reached out to connect. One such emerging network the Institute sought out were colleagues bringing theatre and the performing arts to their work as therapists, clinicians, youth workers, educators and researchers.
Passionate creators, many were experimenting with the use of theatre, performance and the arts to address the challenges of poverty, civil war, forced immigration, social injustice, mental illness, illiteracy, sexual violence, planetary destruction, illiteracy and more. Many had been working in relative isolation, with minimal resources and limited access to others doing similar work.
As more began to learn of the Institute’s work, we in turn were learning about these small pockets of community and performance activists and set out to build connections. In 2001, Newman and Holzman, along with Taos Institute colleagues Ken and Mary Gergen and Sheila McNamee put out a call for proposals to create the inaugural gathering of Performing the World. Could Performing the World help advance a global conversation on the “performance turn” in the social sciences and a new way forward for social activism? In its first year, it gave birth to a performatory learning and development community that connected people doing performance work in community-based programs, hospitals, therapy offices, in universities, classrooms, organizations, and corporate settings. After 15 gatherings over 24 years, the Performing the World community continues to grow “rhizomatically” (non-hierarchically and independently) supporting and sustaining a non-ideological social activism — “performance activism.”
The International Class 2004
In the early years of the Performing the World community-building, new colleagues began to reach out to Lois Holzman and ask to be trained in the Institute’s social therapeutic approach. They wanted help to advance their work. It was out of these requests that The International Class was created in 2004. After 22 years, over 250 aspiring leaders, social activists and scholars from 42 countries have completed the 9-month program. We’ve accepted applicants from all over the world without prerequisites or requirements — nonprofessionals and professionals alike.
Participants came from Argentina, Austria, Australia, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Macedonia, Mauritius, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Serbia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Uganda, the United States and Wales.
Some of our graduates have gone on to create or further develop organizations and events that provide positive, performatory environments. Among them: Hope for Youth Uganda, founded by former accountant, Peter Nsubuga in Kampala, which serves hundreds of children orphaned by HIV; Let the Girl Be!, founded by Peter’s brother, David Kawanuka to support young women facing sexual violence and discrimination; the Turning Point community in Kolkata, India, founded by Ishita Sanyal, that helps people with severe mental illness live productive lives; an international conference, Play, Perform, Learn, Grow, founded in 2017 by Elena Boukouvala to explore creative community practices; Cultivating Ensembles (founded by Raquell Holmes), and carried on by Jim Martinez and Carolyn Sealfon to bringing performance and play to the STEM community of scientists and mathematicians; the Pandies Theatre, a political youth theatre founded by the late Sanjay Kumar in New Delhi, India; the Street Project Foundation supporting youth development through the arts and founded by Rita Ezenwa-Okoro; the Improv Alchemy consultancy founded by Lainie Hodges; and campaigns across Africa led by Elizabeth Adams, an educator and champion of albino rights.
The International Class has attracted aspiring leaders–accomplished NGO founders and funders looking to grow their leadership capacities; newly minted community organizers, youth workers, healthcare professionals, therapists, and professors intrigued by a cultural approach to personal and professional development. Many are frustrated by how they have been trained to relate to people. Some had already been using forms of play, the creative arts and performance in their work. Some are pioneers and innovators, radicals in spirit and impassioned about bringing about profound social change. Read their bios HERE.
They come with a curiosity for developing out-of-the-box approaches to dealing with the material and conceptual poverty, and the violence, alienation and social injustice of this moment. They are intrigued by the Institute’s 50 years of non-ideological, radically independent tool-making, its body of philosophically demanding conceptual/practical-theoretical work, and on-the-ground practices instantiating the power of play and performance for reinitiating human development and learning.
For many, graduation from the International Class students is just the beginning of ongoing collaboration. Many students build lasting connections and find support and inspiration from the network of their fellow graduates and from the Institute and the Performing the World community.
Please contact: Melissa Meyer mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org, Associate Director, for more details on the schedule, registration, tuition and scholarship availability.