2026/27 Program
Over the course of this nine-month online program, The International Class…
Builds its cohort as a site of collective inquiry, engaging playfully and philosophically—methodologically meandering, using participants’ own lives and professional practices as building material.
Experiences the developmental power of play, performance, and improvisation, gaining exposure to the many stages and global expressions of performance activism.
Practices the art of developmental learning, performing conversation and listening “activistically,” and collectively exploring the emotional-social-intellectual-cultural challenges these practices raise for them.
Engages in in-depth study of the Institute’s core practices—social therapeutics and performance activism—including their histories, methodological innovations, and global community of practitioners.
Practically-critically explores both new and prevailing understandings and practices of activism, development, leadership, and therapeutics, along with the psychological and philosophical concepts that underlie and shape them (e.g., identity, self, group, community, normalcy, mental illness, psychiatric diagnosis, truth, reality, inner life, stages, etc.)
Explores some of the most promising recent challenges to bio-medical and individualistic models in psychology, education, and leadership, bringing a social-therapeutic gaze to developments such as the performance turn, the play revolution, social constructionism, relational engagement, improvisational learning, performance activism, and postactivism (beyond the Anthropocene).
Study Materials
The class engages seminal readings and talks by Institute scholar-activists, including the late Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, as well as Carrie Lobman and Dan Friedman, alongside revolutionary voices they have drawn upon and worked with. These include the conceptual breakthroughs of Karl Marx’s methodological writings on the unity of personal change and world change; Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of language as activity; and developmentalist Lev Vygotsky’s search for method and his challenge to passive, individualistic models of human development.
At the same time, the curriculum is not fixed. Contemporary works that challenge the status quo in psychology, education, activism, and social change enter the class readings as they arise—shaped by the questions, experiences, and conversations of the cohort and faculty. In this way, study is both grounded in a living intellectual conversation and continuously developed through collective inquiry.
A Developmental Learning Journey
At the heart of the International Class group activity is creating environments for playful, philosophical conversation. The “environment building mindset” is prerequisite and product (to quote Vygotsky) of developmental (transformative) learning.
The International Class online program activities support students of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to build “from scratch” something new – their group culture — their learning journey. Faculty introduce playful language games, improvisational exercises and other cultural/performatory activities that spark “demanding and developmental” exploration.
Online seminars feature guest faculty (community builders, performance activists, NGO leaders and founders) joining to introduce cultural, educational / youth development, organizational development and political-change organizations that populate the Institute’s broader development community. These real-world challenges that successful social entrepreneurs and grassroots activists have faced (and built with) are material with which The International Class shapes and reshapes its understandings and practices of leadership.
Program Structure
Weekend Intensives:
The class meets for 6 “weekend intensives” online – two in October, two in February and two in June, led by Lois Holzman and faculty. Weekend intensives typically include 3 hours of meetings daily, Friday—Sunday.
Ongoing Study (live online and asynchronous).
In between intensives, students continue their studies with International Class faculty through Google Groups discussion and bi-monthly live Zoom calls.
Public Online Classes and Workshops.
Students are invited to participate in public events and workshops offered by the Institute throughout the year and to connect and converse with the Institute’s broad multi-cultural development community.
Please contact: Melissa Meyer mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org, Associate Director, for more details on the schedule, registration, tuition and scholarship availability.