Rabbi Adina Allen and Elizabeth explore the profound connection between art, creativity, and inner truth in this conversation. They discuss how Adina's upbringing in an art therapy environment shaped her understanding of creativity as a means to access deeper truths within ourselves.

The conversation delves into societal disconnection from inner knowing, the importance of reconnecting with creativity, and the need to embrace chaos and discomfort in the creative process. It emphasizes the need for a collective journey towards reclaiming personal power and imagination, integrating dualities, and holding space for new truths to emerge.

The importance of collective perspectives, the creative process, and the unseen connections that bind us are examined. They discuss the five pathways of creativity derived from Jewish texts, emphasizing the need for self-discovery and the power of community. The dialogue highlights the significance of grief, authenticity, and the potential for transformation in times of chaos and uncertainty.

More about Adina Allen

Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, writer, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and to the Sacred. She is cofounder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for spiritual connection and social transformation. Based on the work of her mother, renowned art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina developed the Jewish Studio Process, a methodology for unlocking creativity, which she has brought to thousands of organizational and community leaders, educators, artists, and clergy across the country. A national media contributor, popular speaker, and workshop leader, Adina is published in scholarly as well as mainstream publications and is the author of The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom (Ayin, 2024).

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

The thoughtful and relentlessly wise strategic network thinker, Curtis Ogden, shares his journey into systemic change work. He emphasizes the importance of facilitative leadership and the skills needed to navigate societal fractures. Curtis also delves into the significance of creating safe spaces for collaboration, understanding systems, and the power of narrative in shaping our experiences.

He emphasizes the need for co-regulation in interactions and recognizing diversity while finding common ground. He also invites listeners to explore what they may not see and approach challenges with hope and humility.

In this conversation, Curtis and Elizabeth explore society's intricate power, privilege, and accountability dynamics. They delve into the concept of energy system science, discussing how energy flows impact various systems, including communities and ecosystems. The importance of compassion in leadership, the role of fear in decision-making, Indigenous wisdom, and the significance of collective memory are highlighted as essential elements in fostering human connection.

The dialogue underscores the necessity of nurturing "endangered experiences" and the importance of open conversations in a diverse world. Ultimately, the conversation calls for tapping into care, love, and gratitude as foundational elements for a more harmonious existence.

To learn more about Curtis and connect:

Curtis Ogden was raised in a multi-racial community in Flint, Michigan and educated in the public school system there, all of which served as a foundation for early learning around dynamics of race and class and also a love for people of different ethnic and cultural identities. He also spent many summers visiting with maternal and paternal grandparents in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, and fell in love with that land and waterscape, which helped him to develop a deep appreciation of the more-than-human realm. His parents were both educators and people of faith who worked on issues of educational equity and international understanding. For almost 20 years, Curtis has been a Senior Associate with the Interaction Institute for Social Change.

Curtis is a network weaver-facilitator-trainer, leadership coach, organizational development and systems change consultant, and co-creator of the field of “energy systems science and practice” in support of resilient and regenerative communities. He provides collaborative network building support to initiatives focused on racial/socio-economic equity and sustainability in food systems, public health, education and economic vitality. He also offers capacity building services focused on leadership and organizational development, multi-interestholder and public engagement; network building; process design and complex facilitation.

For over 12 years, he has helped to steward Food Solutions New England, a regional six-state network dedicated to advancing just, sustainable and democratic food systems. Curtis has also helped lead a variety of equity initiatives, including supporting the Voice, Choice and Action gathering of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Network; the Center for a Livable Future’s Community of Learning and Practice on economic justice and racial equity for the Food Policy Council Network; the Wallace Center’s Food Systems Leadership Network, dedicated to advancing community food sovereignty, self-determination and solidarity. He also serves on the advisory council of Beautiful Ventures, a narrative change social enterprise that influences popular culture by elevating perceptions of Black humanity; FLOW, which seeks to safeguard the Great Lakes (the planet’s largest freshwater lake system), by advancing public trust solutions and cutting-edge policy work; Rural Communities Rising, which...

[BEAUTIFULLY FLAWED] BECOMING

The process of coming to be something or of passing into a state.

[Oxford English Dictionary]

Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is one of the prominent visionaries of our time.

Rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, Akomolafe is Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi's father, the grateful life partner to Ije, and a son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak.

Our debut conversation explores Bayo's perspective on the vital role of our individual and collective untold stories, our current position at the end of the world as we know it, the emerging co-creation of new worlds, our exploration of lostness, and, in the spirit of a true poet, the profound role of wonder as a driving motivation.

Bayo shares otherworldly examples illustrating our interconnectedness, the significance of queer spaces, the crucial necessity of navigating "cracks" within systems, the beauty of the unknowable, and the potential for co-creating life-affirming realities amidst chaos.

The episode culminates in reflections on the journey of becoming, inviting anyone interested to embrace their innate wildness on the path to reclamation and liberation. Thanks for opening to new ways of being - enjoy!

About Bayo:

Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).

In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023).

He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and has been Commencement Speaker in two universities convocation events. He is also the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. In a ceremony in July 2023, the City of Portland (Maine, USA) awarded Dr. Akomolafe with the symbolic ‘Key to the City’ in recognition of his planet-wide work and achievements.

Dr. Akomolafe is a Member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow for the Royal Society of Arts in the UK, and an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

Connect with Bayo and The Emergence Network (including joining the five-day festival,