Playing for Change

The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music had the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share…

Our intuitive capacity for deep collaboration has the power to change the world.

The Intuitive Power of Human Collaboration There are twenty-four of us, crammed into the kitchen, trying not to tread on each others’ toes. We have a box of vegetables dug fresh from the allotments at Cloughjordan eco-village, County Tipperary, Ireland. Our task, should we choose to accept it, is to feed ourselves using only these veg and the utensils in our host Stephen’s kitchen. Stephen…

Artistic Practices for Social Change

Theory comes from practice—feeling comfortable with the unknown, with humility and compassion, in a very, very complex world ~ Alain Ruche In recent years, my frustration, my curiosity and, yes, pure serendipity gave me privileged access to high-level scientific conferences on system analysis and complexity, where I was the only policymaker. Indeed, our results-oriented policies do not…

Money: in terms of social change, it’s both ‘beauty and the beast’

By Michael Edwards Is money a curse or a cure in relation to injustice and inequality?  Philip Larkin’s poetry entered my consciousness during Britain’s “winter of discontent” in 1978, a grim time for those who remember it. Strikes by refuse collectors, nurses and workers in electricity plants brought the country to a halt. Things were so bad that even the gravediggers went on strike.…

The Many Dimensions of Change

The population undergoing drastic change is a population of misfits, and misfits live and breathe in an atmosphere of passion and imbalance, explosive and hungry for action. ~ Eric Hoffer in The Ordeal of Change This quotation by Eric Hoffer, the insightful American philosopher, seems to have been written for our times. It introduces some reality into our understanding of change itself. We have…