Ep.21 “Performing a Future Where We Own What We Make….”

All Power To The Developing!

Meet Ben Fink and Tiffany Turner— virtuoso community organizers mining the rich heritage of communities from the coalfields of East Kentucky and the ash pits of Alabama, to the sidewalk stoops of Baltimore and Milwaukee — and helping working class Americans tell their stories of hard work, love and abandonment. Their Performing Our Future empowerment coalition (spearheaded by the famed Roadside Theatre along with Black Belt Citizens United, Arch Social Club and Rural/Urban Flow) organizes diverse, cross-community ensembles in which locals can create with strangers and, in so-doing, re-imagine themselves and their communities. “Performance builds trust and power — it helps us own all we are and all we make.” Ben and Tiffany talk to cultural/political historian Dan Friedman about a tradition of community organizing tracing back to the populist movements of the 1890s.

https://www.performingourfuture.com/

https://roadside.org/asset/secular-communion-coalfields-populist-aesthetic-and-practice-roadside-theater

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.----more----

The East Side Institute is a hub for a diverse and emergent community of social activists, thought leaders, and practitioners who are reigniting our human abilities to imagine, create and perform beyond ourselves—to develop. Each episode will introduce you to another performance activist or play revolutionary from around the world. To learn more about the East Side Institute you can go to https://eastsideinstitute.org/ Made possible in part by Growing Social Therapeutics: The Baylah Wolfe Fund.