In this conversation,  Aurelie Harp talks with Lois Holtzman, co-founder of the Eastside Institute, about how gender, race, and other identities can both liberate and constrain us.

They examine identity politics, feminism, and the limits of binary thinking, and discuss how performance, play, and relational practices can open possibilities for more inclusive, collective futures. If you would like to see this interview in video form, as well as the rest of Aurelie Harp and Womanity's work 

Womanity's YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/@womanityproject6740

Womanity's Website: https://www.wemanitycoaching.com/

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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Wycliffe Barsa is the co-founder and CEO of Kosi Africa, an ambassador for the Global Play Brigade, and a graduate of the East Side Institute’s flagship program, the International Class.  Here he shares his journey from living on the streets as a child to his work today promoting and transforming education in Kenya, and, in the process, developing young leaders as visionaries who will return to their communities to help them generate new possibilities. 

What makes Kosi different from most non-profits is, Barasa says, is sustainability. Instead of relying on outside money, when Kosi approaches a school, it does a Resource Audit, asking the school what sort of resources do you have and how can we work with you, the parents and the larger community, using those resources, to together solve these problems?  “We’re not there to help the community; we’re there to work with the community,” he explains.  Pointing out that in English “Kosi” means “Go” or “Keep Moving,” Barasa continues, “Development is how the whole community comes together to move and grow and create power.”

https://kosiafrica.org/

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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“Live theatre is a way to co-dream,” says Anthony Moseley, Chief Programming Officer and Artistic Director of Chicago’s Collaboraction theatre.  “It can connect us at a really deep level that allows us to drop seeds of new emotions and new possibilities.”  Moseley joins host Desire Wandan to discuss his artistic and political journey and the role that the multi-racial, multi-cultural theatre that he leads plays in not only bringing theatre to, but creating theatre with, the poor communities of Chicago.

Collaboraction, under Moseley's leadership, has devised hundreds of plays with young people and adults from Chicago’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, plays that have been performed in parks and community centers across the city and cheered on by tens of thousands of audience members.  Most of its performances are followed by a “crucial conversation” where the audience members engage with the issues raised by the play.  Since the pandemic, Collaboraction has produced 150 digital pieces and the film adaptation of its play, Trail in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till won a Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award.  Collaboraction is about to open its new cultural center “The House of Belonging” in Chicago’s Humbolt Park neighborhood.

“The company itself is a collaboration,” says Moseley, “a never-ending devised piece of theatre.”

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[email protected] | 773.230.9981

collaboraction.org

House of Belonging Capital Campaign

Winner of a 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Human Interest, Long Form, and 2023 Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary  for The Lost Story of Emmett Till: Trial in the Delta

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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Kathleen J. Guillaume-Delemar, President and CEO of the Center for Community Progress shares the work of the Center in helping communities across the country transform vacant lots and abandoned buildings into community parks, food co-ops, dignified affordable housing, and other vibrant examples of mutual aid and grassroots community power.  Guillaume-Delemar, a first-generation Haitian-American who grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, during the crack epidemic, when vacant lots in her neighborhood were gathering places of desperation and despair.  Describing herself as a “compassionate revolutionary” and an “unapologetic thorn in the side of society,” she is now leading efforts from Flint, Michigan, to Lafayette, Louisiana, to transform urban ruins into centers of community power and hope.

Kathleen's  upcoming event is the National Land Bank Network Summit on September 8-9 in Detroit. Please click the link for more information. https://communityprogress.org/nlbn-summit-2025/

sign up for newsletter! https://communityprogress.org/newsletter-signup/

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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In this episode of All Power to the Developing, host Desire Wandan sits down with genre-defying performance artist Akim Funk Buddha for an exploration of creativity, culture, and transformation. From beatboxing and Mongolian throat singing to reimagining the Japanese tea ceremony, Akim shares how he uses art as a bridge across traditions, identities, and generations. This is a conversation about movement, myth-breaking, and the liberating power of performance.

https://www.funkbuddha.net/

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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Magicians Without Borders has brought free magic shows to 40 countries and approximately a million people, and it provides free three-to-four-year education programs in magic to thousands of young people in “the forgotten places of the world.”  Carlos Lopez, a leader of Magicians Without Borders, unpacks the developmental power of magic when it is taught to young people in impoverished communities. “If your situation seems impossible,” he says. “If you see and experience wonder, it might awaken hope that the impossible can become possible.” Chatting with host Desire Wandan, Lopez shares his journey from a privileged life in Bogota, Colombia, to teaching magic in slums and refugee camps worldwide. In the process, he has, in his words, helped to create “social tissue that is weaving lives together that were not supposed to be intertwined.”

Website: https://www.magicianswithoutborders.com/ https://www.carloslopez.co/

Instagram: @carloshlopez @magicianswithoutborders

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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Host Desire Wandan talks with Abbie VanMeter, Executive Director of Collaborative Innovation for the Coordinated Management of Meaning Institute, and Don Waisanen, Professor at Baruch College, CUNY Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Their conversation focuses on Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)—a communication theory and a lived practice—which approaches human communication as how we together create meaning.  “CMM and social therapeutics have a shared understanding of human beings as builders of the social world,” says VanMeter. This conversation provides a concise and clear introduction to this important social constructionist approach to interpersonal communication, and its potential impact on our weary and wounded world stuck in age-old communication traps.

Dr. Omar H. Ali, the Dean of Lloyd International Honors College, Professor of Comparative African Diaspora History and a Research Associate in the Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro sits down with host Desire Wandan to discuss the importance of play, performance and improvisation to teaching and learning. They focus on the innovative online global educational community Let’s Learn!, a joint project of Lloyd Honors College and the East Side Institute. Dr. Ali also shares his personal journey from a community organizer to world renowned historian and college dean—remaining a play revolutionary throughout.

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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For over 25 years, Angela Coleman, the author, most recently, of The Art of Chilling Out for Women and the founder of the Sisterhood Agenda, an international network active in 36 countries, has been working to support and empower women and girls.  In this discussion with host Desire Wandan, Coleman focuses on PARKS (Positively Affirming Reality & Knowledge in Sisterhood) Holistic Housing, through which she hopes to provide eco-friendly, supportive housing for over 100 women in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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Albert Marqués is a skilled jazz musician from Barcelona, Spain, a public-school music teacher in Brooklyn, New York, and a creative social justice activist.  In this episode, he and host Desire Wandan focus on his program “Amplifying Voices” which brings musicians together with victims of state violence to create platforms for them to tell their stories to the wider world.  “Amplifying Voices” has worked with, among others, death row prisoners, Holocaust survivors, and Jason Fulford, the cousin of Eric Garner who was choked to death by New York City police officers in 2014.  “Music creates an atmosphere, a vibe, that allows walls to come down and for people to connect and listen to each other as human beings,” says Marqués.  “I want to use music against power to create power.”

Albert's website www.albertmarques.com/amplify