Dear Reader,

Dear Subscriber First Name,

Here at Optimistic Anthropology, we believe that Emergent Learning (EL) – at its best – is a powerful practice for shaping the conditions by which the people who are part of organizations, communities, and systems can slow down, share observations and memories, reflect intentionally, and learn together into the actions and strategies needed to create a more just, equitable, and positive world.

This month, I’m excited to share a handful of new reflections, resources, and tools related to Emergent Learning. While EL has been part of the way that I work since before there was an Optimistic Anthropology, 2024 has presented some wonderful opportunities to dig deeper into this practice with colleagues, early and seasoned learners, and organizations all seeking to use learning as a process for making social change.

I hope that you’ll check out all the resources we’ve shared below and let us know what you think!

Be well, do good, and keep each other safe,
Alison

What the Heck Are the Principles of Emergent Learning?

Since our founder Alison Gold last wrote about Emergent Learning on our blog in 2018, she has been delving more deeply into this practice and taken on new roles and work relating to it. As a result, she thought it would be a great time to share how she’s seen the practice evolve and her latest best thinking about Emergent Learning by answering the question: “What the Heck are the Principles of Emergent Learning?”

On Memory Keeping and Emergent Learning

What is the role of memory in social change work, especially in these incredibly complex times? Our founder has been thinking about this a lot since June when she attended the Emergent Learning Community’s Annual Learning Summit and fellow practitioner Tehout Selameab shared an insight that has stuck with her these many months later.

Read: On Memory Keeping and Emergent Learning.

Video: Preview Oa’s New Facilitation Tool for Emergent Learning Principles

This summer, we developed a new set of illustrations and a new facilitation activity focused on the Principles of Emergent Learning! Our own Alison Gold stewarded the process and piloted the use of the illustrations and the activity when she facilitated an Introduction to Emergent Learning workshop this summer. Both were really well received! Alison recorded a short video (~7 minutes) to share about the experience and preview the facilitation activity. Watch it here!

The Optimistic Anthropology Store is Open!

While previewing our new illustrations and facilitation activity on the Principles of Emergent Learning, some of our colleagues shared that they’d like to purchase these tools to use in their own work.

So, we’ve opened an online store to make that possible. To celebrate the opening of the OA Store, we’re offering 20% off all orders using the code OA20PERCENTOFF. The code is good until 11:59pm EDT on October 31.

We’re also playing around with the idea of printing some items – stickers, journals, magnets, mugs (or something else – with the EL Principles illustrations on them. If that’s of interest to you, we’d love your input on what to make and we’ve set up a short survey to gather it. (It’s just 5 questions!)

Enrollment for the 2025 Emergent Learning Training Program is Open!

The Emergent Learning Community Project conducts an Emergent Learning open enrollment program each year beginning in January. In this program, participants learn to improve their results by using the Principles and Tools of Emergent Learning with others in a collaborative setting.

The program is held virtually over five months and culminates with an in-person meeting in June. It alternates between monthly cohort-based sessions with 20–25 people, and small group coaching sessions with an experienced faculty member. Participants learn EL by applying it to their current work goals and challenges and reflecting on their experiences with their peers.

Learn more and sign up here.

Let’s explore working together!

In the 7+ years since Optimistic Anthropology opened its doors, we’ve had the chance to work with an amazing array of client-changemakers across the U.S. and (more recently) in other parts of the world!

Through all of these engagements, we've aimed to model what we hope to see more of in the world by building trusting relationships with clients and recognizing and honoring that they bring deep knowledge and experience about the issues they work on and the communities they work with and within.

In turn, we are committed to bringing Optimistic Anthropology’s values of joy, curiosity, humanity, and rigor to our work of co-creating learning cultures and processes that enable transformational strategies for more just, equitable, and positive organizations, communities, and systems. What might that look like? To give you a sense, here are a few things we’ve loved working on in the last year:

• Integrating emergent learning with an intersectional feminist perspective into the strategy, culture and processes of a international sexual and reproductive health and rights organization.

• Coaching academic and staff teams at a leading research university who are developing transformational initiatives. The goal of our work together is to strengthen their approaches through deepening their equity, trust-building, and participatory work with communities as well as developing plausible connections between the work they are hoping to do today and the change they are seeking to make in the world.

• Collaborating with staff and artistic leadership to develop culture, processes, and strategies for evaluation and learning at an anti-racist, movement arts-based youth empowerment organization.

• Uplifting the voices of grassroots organizers and advocates so that a leading funder in the space could better understand the current reality of grassroots efforts and what grassroots leaders envision for the future of their movement.

As we look ahead to 2025, Optimistic Anthropology will have capacity to take on some new work with clients. If what we do and how we work sounds like something that your organization or partnership is looking for (or might be), please email Alison or schedule a time for a free consultation!

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