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PlayGrounding

Our mental health systems are broken. The work of getting well can make us feel worse than we did when we started. PlayGrounding is about finding the courage to seek the help we need and the hope to keep going when it feels like nothing is working and no one is listening.
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Now displaying: Category: activism
Sep 12, 2020

None of the problems our world is facing right now can be solved if we can’t find new ways to talk to each other. Right now, consensus seems like a far off dream and we find ourselves asking, are we doomed to fail? Or is it possible to create a new way to talk to each other so that we can reach consensus and move forward? Maybe we’re following a script that isn’t working? Maybe it’s time to improvise.

And that’s what we’re going to learn about today in our conversation with Marian Rich and Carrie Lobman from the East Side Institute, co-authors of “Playing Around with Changing the World,” a chapter about the East Side Institute’s International Class called The Applied Improvisation Mindset, to be published by Bloomsbury Press early 2021. 

Jul 16, 2020

Scott Froschauer is an artist known by many for his public art installations of street signs. They look just like the street signs you pass by every day, but the messages they convey are not what you’d ever expect to see. In this episode about play and activism, he discusses how how experiential art has a lot in common with improv. It grounds us in the moment and helps us, as he describes it, “do a check on who’s in charge of your inner voice.”  

Aug 1, 2017

Dada, the Beats and the Hippies - what do they all have in common? The way they played was a problem for the authorities, for the people in power trying to instill black and white order on the world.  This week on Playgrounding we’ll be talking to Shepherd Siegel, an educator and author whose work explores disruptive play and protest. We’ll explore the role of the trickster as passed down to us through mythology from many diverse cultures, then learn about cultural movements led by pranksters who laid the groundwork for some of the methods used to protest the Vietnam war.

Shepherd is completing a book that will be launched this fall called Disruptive Play: The Trickster in Politics and Culture, about how play and the creative impulse could transform our society. In this episode, we’ll meet Shepherd and learn about the background behind his message. This fall, Shepherd will be back for a second interview where we’ll dive deeper into the book itself. I’ve had a sneak peek at the intro and first chapter. If they are any indication of what’s to come, you’re going to want to keep this book launch on your radar! 

Shepherd Siegel grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the midst of the Sixties counterculture. He was a professional rock and jazz musician who switched it out for his career as an educator (in music, career & technical and special education), earning his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley.  He has over thirty publications in the education field.  Career Ladders, his internship program for high school students, is represented by over twenty school districts, a corresponding book, and an award from the US Department of Labor.  From 1996-2012 he led the School to Career and Career + Technical Education (CTE) initiative for Seattle Public Schools. 

He joined Project Lead the Way in 2012 after having strong success with their STEM program in ten Seattle middle and high schools, until 2015.  He is a Past President of the Washington Association for Career and Technical Education, serving from 2012-2015.  He was the 2004 Outstanding Career and Technical Educator for the state of Washington, and a national finalist for the Association for Career and Technical Education 2005 Outstanding Career + Technical Educator.  The KAPPAN published his article about a meaningful high school diploma in 2010. 

He has returned to his countercultural roots, currently writing a book, Disruptive Play: The Trickster in Politics and Culture, about how play and the creative impulse could transform our society.

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