I’ve been writing this Substack for a few months now. Maybe you’re new here, or maybe you’ve been following along for a while. If you poke about my site, you’ll likely get a sense of what I write about. But I wanted to take the time and space to share about what I'm trying to do here. A public declaration of aims. A manifesto of sorts.
So…
What is The Possibilities Project?
The Possibilities Project is a social change movement for creative thinkers and thoughtful creatives who want to build a world that is caring, sustainable, respectful, and joyful.
I am aiming to build a hub where we encourage each other to be curious, courageous, inventive, and loving. Here we are reflexive, meaning we pay attention to ourselves in the world and with other people, including our actions, so we can do differently and better. We interrogate how cultural values shape the ways we act and interact, and we centre the power of stories to connect to each other and understand difference.
I’m working with the assumption that how we think and feel translates to our actions and what we do. How we think and feel about a person, a place, or a thing affects how we interact with each other, make decisions, and develop and build processes and structures. If we can question and support our thoughts, feelings and actions, we can change the world.
And, who are you? Who is The Possibilities Project for?
Maybe you are a teacher, and looking for ways to creatively support your students to be their awesome selves in a system that is asking you to help them fit into specific boxes. Maybe you are an artist, and you are navigating your own creative presence in social arts movements. Maybe you are a clinician working with kids or manage a seniors’ residence, and you feel tension between your professional or organizational expectations for accountability and wanting to be more human-centred in how you support the people you work with.
Or maybe none of these things describe you at all.
Who are you? What are you looking for? What’s resonating? I’d love to know!
But let me end with this question - what is the world you want to build and live in, and what’s stopping you from building and living it?
Drop a comment, or shoot me a DM.
“Curious, courageous, inventive, and loving” is a pretty complete checklist of things to aspire to (and an amazing epitaph).
Hello Julia Gray, The "possibilities project" is an exciting name, congratulations.
Creative thinkers have adopted some perspectives. Those surely have some basis. For an educator and policy maker, you know fundamentals of collaboration. Many times the direction of collaboration can already be stated by the hierarchy, and ultimately by those who furnish the financing. Substack is different.
Perspectives have to be discussed to find out what is the Possibility Project? Nobody is paying us to stick with the project, so prior agreement is paramount.
We want to make the world "better", but existing world policy might make it seem that we are paddling upstream. Certainly there are inconsistencies. In the short time that I worked in education I found a little window where some new project could be proposed. I worked up a model and submitted it, and while administration was considering the risks, and what parents might object to, it was already mid term. Mid term is when the classes are cramming in all the required lessons, and end term is completely taken up with testing, paper submission, the finals, and grading. Nothing there.
Let's wait until next fall term. Fat chance!
So how will it work this time? If we are reflexive, paying attention to ourselves and others, what can we do differently and better? What are the cultural values outside of us that we have to contend with, but more importantly, what are the cultural values within each of us that we assume are the core of reality?
Surely, how we think controls our doing, and that doing controls our future. Can we question our thoughts, feeling and actions? If we question them, can we make a value judgment and know how to enter into a process to alter anything?
First step; we need an agreed upon model, a verbal realm-of-possibility (like your title). What is our belief of what is possible, and how can we broaden that outlook? First we have to decide that what we think now is incomplete. It is either wrong, or out of date. Then we have to understand where to find options. Most likely it is where we weren't looking before. There must be a knack to it, which is the needed discussion.
I survey Substack, not for so long, but I get around. I have (really) never found substantive discussion. Most are the silent majority. Many share an acknowledgement, with no content examination. Authors are completely focused on building their viewership. They'll say something to be nice, and then get on with it. If they are being paid it is worse, because they feel an obligation to keep the mill producing.
You addressed to people with credentials, like yourself. They will do something to build their credentials. There may be others, but they are few and far between.
Let's find some of them.
My site is a meeting place dedicated to discussion and model building (the basis of future discussion). You might like it. It is willing to collaborate on your project. What do you want from it?
Good to read your site.
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