The Culture of Radical Engagement framework supports participants to lead a shift in culture toward empathy, an essential and often elusive arena of social transformation.
Cedar Landsman 99F and Lucien Demaris, lead trainers at The Relational Center, will collaborate with students, staff, faculty, administrators, and community partners in a week-long residency offering a nuanced, relational approach to collaborative leadership and transformative action.
How can we create an inclusive, empathic, interdependent, and relational culture on campus?
How do we prepare to confront the complex challenges in our community and our world with humanizing values?
The Culture of Radical Engagement framework draws on social capital research, social neuroscience, radical relational theory, community organizing, and somatic education to offer a nuanced approach to issues of identity, intersectionality, and privilege using an embodied, relational practice. This series of introductory workshops for students, staff, faculty, and administrators will culminate in a day-long convening for participants to deepen skills and connections built throughout the week. This residency will also engage community partners, including Springfield No One Leaves and Prison Birth Project. Participants will experience:
Strengthening Bonds: Developing and maintaining strong, interdependent relationships through the cultivation of collective resonance, a transformative experience of group empathy.
Building Bridges: Increasing our collective capacity to radically include diverse perspectives and experiences, manage complexity, and bridge people and communities together in solidarity.
Sharing Leadership:A model of collaborative leadership practice that distributes benefit and responsibility equitably and creates greater resilience for communities engaged in change-making and social justice work.
Public Presentation
The Culture of Radical Engagement: an interactive public lecture
Tuesday, February 23 at 5 p.m. in FPH Main Lecture Hall
The Culture of Radical Engagement framework draws on social capital research, social neuroscience, radical relational theory, community organizing, and somatic education to offer a nuanced approach to issues of identity, intersectionality, and privilege. Join Cedar Landsman and Lucien Demaris, lead trainers from The Relational Center, for an interactive presentation on the research behind the innovative framework of The Culture of Radical Engagement and a collaborative exploration of its applications in education and activism.
Workshop Sessions and Day-Long Convening
Register for location information.
Relational Organizing: a workshop for students
An introduction to tools and strategies for shared leadership and collaborative action based on strong relational bonds.
Monday, February 22 from 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Session 1: Open to all students
Monday, February 22 from 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Session 2: Open to students of color only
Thursday, February 25 from 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Session 1: Open to all students
Thursday, February 25 from 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Session 2: Open to students of color only
Relational Culture of Shared Leadership: a workshop for staff
Tuesday, February 23 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
This session will introduce relational tools for strengthening shared leadership and collaboration, and supporting an empathic, inclusive culture on campus.
Relational Somatics: An Ecological Journey
Wednesday, February 24 from 9-11 a.m.
In this session, workshop participants will experiment with somatic and movement exercises that support a collective experience of relationality. In this rich and intimate embodied field, participants will be invited to weave life’s vibrant, relational story of connection from vitality to vulnerability, and mimic the evolutionary journey of life and human community. This session is open to all students, staff, and faculty and is a space for all bodies and abilities, no movement experience needed.
Relational Culture in the Classroom: a workshop for faculty
Wednesday, February 24 from Noon-2 p.m.
This session will introduce relational tools for supporting an empathic, inclusive culture on campus and in the classroom. Focus on support for dialogue and facilitation of difficult conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus.
Relational Culture: a workshop for Division III Students
Wednesday, February 24 from 5:30-8:00 p.m.
This interactive skill-building session will focus on countering the culture of isolation and increasing support and resilience for Div III students.
The Culture of Radical Engagement Convening and Celebration
Friday, February 26 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m., followed by a Community Celebration from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
The residency will culminate with a Convening and All-Community Celebration that will bring together students, staff, and faculty who participate in workshops throughout the week. Participants will share their experiences, explore opportunities for applying their learning further through ongoing collaboration and practice, and generate ideas for how to continue cultivating a humanizing culture that prioritizes empathy, inclusion, collaboration, and shared leadership.
The Convening is open to anyone who has participated in workshops throughout the week and the Celebration is open to everyone in the campus community!
Other Sessions
The residency will include sessions with senior level administrators, community partners, first year students participating in the “Community Engagement for Social Change” Living Learning Community, and community engagement staff.
For more information: commongood@hampshire.edu
Co-sponsors: Admissions office, campus leadership and activities, Career Options Resource Center, Center for Feminisms, Center for Teaching and Learning, Childhood Youth and Learning Program, Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, Community Partnerships for Social Change, Creativity Center, Culture Brain and Development Program, global education office, Hampshire College Dance Program, James Baldwin Scholars Program, LeBron-Wiggins-Pran Cultural Center, office for diversity and multicultural education, office of the dean of faculty and academic affairs, office of the President, School of Critical Social Inquiry, School of Cognitive Science, School of Humanities Arts and Cultural Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Arts, School of Natural Science, Spiritual Life, Theater Board, Transformative Speaking Program, and the Wellness Center.
Seed Team: In August 2015, a group of Hampshire staff, faculty, and students participated in The Relational Center’s Culture of Radical Engagement training with the support of the Ethics and the Common Good Project. As participants reflected on the transformative value of that training, they began to envision a way to engage the Hampshire College community as a whole in the practice of relational approaches to leadership, culture, and organizing. This core group became the Culture of Radical Engagement Seed Team, collaborating on an ongoing basis throughout Fall 2015 to connect The Relational Center with Hampshire College for a dynamic week-long residency.
Founding Seed Team Members include:
- Javiera Benavente, director, Ethics and the Common Good Project
- Maya Berenholz 12F
- Mary Bombardier, assistant dean of Community Engagement and Director of CPSC
- Karina Fernandez, director of the James Baldwin Scholars Program
- Emily Keppler 11F
- Beth Mattison, assistant director of Childhood, Youth, and Learning
- Brittany Moore 12F
- Alina Ortiz Salvatierra 11F, studio arts intern
- Natalie Sowell, associate professor of theatre
- Teal Van Dyck 06F, program coordinator, Ethics and the Common Good
Joined by Spring 2016 Seed Team Members:
- Desta Cantave 15F
- Jamila Jackson 14F
- Kristen Luschen, dean of Multicultural Education and Inclusion, associate professor of education studies
- Asa Needle 14F
- Allonzo Perez 15F
- Miguel Santiago, associate director of admissions
- Fynta Sidime 15F
- Helen Sharber, assistant professor of economics
- Adisa Stewart 13F, Cultural Center program assistant