Capacity Building of Creative Radicals

The Project “ Capacity Building of Creative Radicals” was an experimental series of workshops where we practiced collective exercises for cultivating embodied ways of knowing and making space for new possibilities.

The focus was on the inner and collective capacities of learning, creativity and change. The tolerance of uncertainty was explored. CBCR removed barriers to creativity and highlighted multifaceted intelligence for dealing with complexity and systemic challenges.

The CBCR initiative was based on Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) professor Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, a framework for catalysing transformative personal and systems change. It integrates systems thinking, innovation, leadership, and awareness to investigate and utilise deeper sources of learning.

Deliverables & Legacy

    • design researcher

    • embodiment student

    • collaborator

    • open mind, body and heart

    • collective awareness

    • deep listening

    • social presencing theory & theory U tools

    • multi-level (physical, spatial, emotional and cognitive) intelligence for system change

As a participant in the initiative, I experimented with over ten different practices for embodied intelligence and collective creativity, both online via Zoom and at our campus. The practices stem from Social Presencing Theater (SPT), developed through a collaboration of Otto Scharmer and Arawana Hayashi, to enable and facilitate systems change pointed out in Theory U. Arawana Hayashi was supported in the voluntary check-in meetings by Ricardo Dutra, a social designer, artist and researcher.

After acquiring Ricardo’s Aesthetic Language Cards, I integrate this innovative approach into my own work, exploring how its principles can inspire cross-collaborations and further iterations.

More about the practices

  • Moving stuckness that comes from thoughts, situations and feelings through the body

  • a mindful practice where the attention is on the feeling of the body; the sensations involved in movement and stillness.

  • Through the body of a group a social system can be enacted and in turn shifted.

  • It's about hold spacing for someone who is very different from you and to evolve through it.

  • Journaling is an useful tool for self-reflection which, together with embodied practices, can lead to action.

  • It is a tool that helps to transform the vision and intention into concrete action via various stages.

  • A set of cards that provide a fresh language to more subtle experiences.