When we feel pressure, frightened, or attacked, we’ve been taught that play is a luxury we can’t afford.
Carrie Lobman says the opposite.
Play may be “the most important thing we have” — not because it’s light or easy, but because it is “the engine of all creativity.”
Carrie challenges us to see play as rigorous, necessary, and deeply human — especially for those of us working with people, emotions, education, community, and social change.
What have we thrown out when we throw out play?
Join Carrie for her workshop, "The Imperative of Play: Beyond Existing Maps" and explore how play can help you create something new when the old ways aren’t enough.
Learn more and register 👉 https://ow.ly/Ktvr50Z4Sjb
East Side Institute
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An international center for the study of social therapeutics and performance activism — bringing h
05/22/2026
When the old scripts stop working and old roadmaps lead us to the same place, what do we do?
Carrie Lobman, nationally recognized advocate for play and creativity, says: we play!
Not as escape. Not as entertainment. But as a serious human capacity for creating with others under conditions of uncertainty, conflict, fear, and not-knowing.
In moments like this — when we are polarized, pressured to take sides, and pulled toward certainty and reaction — play is often the first thing we lose.
And yet, it may be exactly what we need most.
Because without the capacity to play, our responses to crisis can collapse into repetition, opposition, and certainty — reproducing the very world we are trying to change.
Join Carrie Lobman Sat, June 20th 👉 https://ow.ly/p4BZ50Z2Thm
05/10/2026
🚨 The East Side Institute will be at this year’s Brooklyn 5th Avenue Fair on Sunday, May 17 from 10AM–6PM! 🚨
We’ll be out in the community all day sharing information about the Institute, engaging people in conversation, and vending a selection of East Side Institute books and materials.
It's been a while participating in an event like this and we’re very excited to bring the spirit of the Institute into the public space through community, dialogue, development, and connection.
We’re also currently looking for volunteers in the NYC area who would like to join us throughout the day. We’ll be organizing the event into multiple shifts, and this is meant to be a fun, welcoming, low-pressure opportunity to build with us and represent the Institute in the community.
Whether you’d like to help at the table, engage with people passing by, hold signs, or simply be part of the energy, we’d love to have you involved.
Interested?
📧 Contact: [email protected]
We’re very excited and hope to see you there!
In this clip, East Side Institute resident philosopher Chris Helm takes us from quantum physics to Wittgenstein to the everyday work of building ensembles — and challenges the idea that reality is fixed. The world is something we are performing and becoming together.
That spirit is at the heart of this year’s Community Meeting & Fundraiser: Giving in a Culture of Getting (and Loss). May 15–16 | Online
At a time when so many of us are feeling loss — of trust, connection, safety, institutions, and a shared “we” — we’ll come together to explore giving as a creative act of rebuilding relationship and possibility.
We hope you’ll be there — to give, to connect, and to help grow something the world needs right now.
RSVP here: https://ow.ly/zn4V50YVes5
Bayo Akomolafe + Steven Licardi take on the oppressiveness of “making sense” and cleaning up the mess of life. “They say to get your chakras in order and you will be fine, good & whole. Really?…We are coming down to Earth, and we will not arrive intact.” Listen….
04/30/2026
What does community look like in a time like this?
It looks like all of us coming together to create WE in a culture that keeps pulling us apart.
Our Community Meeting – “Giving In a Time of Getting (and Loss)” – celebrates the spirit, generosity and impact of a community built on giving.
Please join us on Friday, May 15th and/or Saturday, May 16 for this special global gathering.
Warmly, The East Side Institute
RSVP here: https://ow.ly/xjKy50YyOCr
04/28/2026
What We Survive, We Perform | Episode #67
A powerful conversation with performance activist Hector Aristizabal. From surviving torture in Colombia to founding ImaginAction and leading healing work in war zones worldwide, Hector shares how performance, community, and imagination can transform trauma. Now back in Colombia, he helps ex-combatants and victims find “the medicine in the wound.”
Listen and be moved by what healing in community can make possible. Look for the All Power to the Developing podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.
East Side Institute Associates Luke Scaros and Luke Perone recorded this “live-letter-and-response” interview with developmental psychologist, Lois Holzman. They share their appreciation of embracing pain.
Join Lois in a half-day practicum and bring the actual dilemmas in your work and life.
Become a Developmentalist: Practice, Reflection and Real Dilemmas
Sat, May 2 or Thur, May 7
More info 👉 https://ow.ly/vMC850YLwYz
04/23/2026
What We Survive, We Perform | Episode 67
A powerful conversation with performance activist Hector Aristizabal. From surviving torture in Colombia to founding ImaginAction and leading healing work in war zones worldwide, Hector shares how performance, community, and imagination can transform trauma. Now back in Colombia, he helps ex-combatants and victims find “the medicine in the wound.”
Listen and be moved by what healing in community can make possible. Look for the All Power to the Developing podcast anywhere you get your podcasts.
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