December 4, 2017 – “Emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies.” -Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy A couple of weeks ago I was in Michigan to do a presentation and discussion with representatives from a...
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October 7, 2016 – In light of a recent conversation with Jana Carp, an academic who has studied the underlying principles of the “slow movement” and how they connect to sustainability, place-making and livabily, I am revisiting, revising and reposting the piece below. Jana...
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August 23, 2016 – “Processes aimed at racial equity change can overlook the privileged side of inequity.” -Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk, “Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity” In numerous social change networks that we support at IISC,...
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August 17, 2016 – Networks, or webs, are core to living systems. Thinking and looking through a network lens can help people to understand the patterns and quality of connection that either make life possible and enable liveliness or threaten life and livelihood. Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco...
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August 9, 2016 – Social change networks are complex, compared with other human organizational forms; they are not so easily controlled, directed or predicted. And that is as it should be, especially when dealing with real life diversity and uncertainty. This can cause some...
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June 7, 2016 – re·gen·er·a·tion rəˌjenəˈrāSH(ə)n/ Renewal, revival, restoration; spiritual transformation; an aspect of living systems without which there would be no life; a process through which whole new organisms may be created from fractions of organisms; an adaptive and evolutionary trait that plays...
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May 31, 2016 – Last week I attended another meeting of the Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics (RARE) and we deepened our conversation about a “regenerative framework” for guiding system change. Underlying our conversations is the premise that many living systems – ecological, economic,...
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May 3, 2016 – Part of the underlying and deeper change potential of taking a network approach is the notion that we lead with contribution before credential. This means being open to the idea, for example, that a 15-year-old high schooler or home schooler...
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April 6, 2016 – “If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our...
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March 22, 2016 – Not long ago, at a gathering of the Food Solutions New England Network Team, one member, Dorn Cox, told the story of a farmer who has become renowned for the health of his soil. Remarkably, the soil health consistently increases, due...
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February 4, 2016 – “Grateful living brings in place of greed: sharing; in place of oppression: respect; in place of violence: peace. Who does not long for a world of sharing, mutual respect, and peace?” –Brother David Steindl Rast The following is a slightly...
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January 18, 2016 – First things first: shoutout to Coretta Scott King for founding the King Center in 1968. Without this institution, we would not have a national holiday celebrating her husband’s life and work. For the past few years, in honor of Coretta’s wishes and Martin, I’ve been doing a...
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