Summer Joy + New Fall Institute
Let's wrap up our summers with joy, and head into fall with the mindset to make change happen
Hey Changemakers!
Happy Summer to all!
As we move into the final weeks of the summer season (well, at least for those of us here in the Northern Hemisphere), it is a good time to embrace joy in our lives, which can mean slowing down, being present, and connecting with those simple wonders around us that we might take for granted.
In her recent post “Joy as Resistance” on Black Girl Country Living, writer Hillary Maddox recently shared some thoughts on joy that were so poetic and meaningful to me. She writes:
“Joy is a force deeper and bigger than us. It is expansive and illusive. It is generated through simple gestures, but not easily found in the places we are taught to look. It is life and light, with no strings attached. The more our basic humanity is threatened, the more important joy becomes.”
I shared Hillary’s post just last week with the participants in my first-ever Summer Institute for Changemakers. Through our 3-week experience together, we had shared a lot about burnout, barriers we’re facing to change, and how we can bring radical optimism into our change practice.
I had begun the entire Institute experience by inviting everyone to find moments of joy in their lives, so Hillary’s words about joy felt so perfect as we wrapped up the Institute with a sense of connectedness and purpose. It is a reminder of the simple, yet powerful, act of showing up in every moment with grace, kindness, compassion, and love. As Hillary writes,
“I am learning to show up for myself, show up for my family, and show up for my community in more meaningful ways. This is, of course, easier said than done, but such is anything worthwhile in this lifetime.”
I am grateful for the incredible group of changemakers that worked with me over the past several weeks to dive deeper into their own personal practice of change and how they can more fully advocate for purpose-driven change in their organizations and work. Working with this collective brought me so much joy and hope, which are essential to advocating for change and being part of building a better future.
NEW - Fall Institute for Changemakers
After facilitating such a successful Summer Institute these past few weeks, I wanted to keep this energy and momentum going into the fall. Let’s exit the summer with joy and grace, and enter the fall with renewed intentions to take action and embrace our role as bold agents of change.
Change is everywhere and happening all the time – yet how do we learn to not just respond to this change, but become shapers of it? How might we see ourselves as strong advocates for positive change within our organizations and the spaces where so much transformation it needed?
So I am launching a new Fall Institute for Changemakers to keep moving forward in bringing people together around the strategies, tools, and practices we need to be a part of making this change happen.
This will be slightly expanded from the Summer Institute, extending our time together into a 4-week experience where we will dive deeper into key aspects of transformation and change.
During a series of four interactive, discussion-based online workshops, we are going to identify key changes we can make in our organizations and our work practice, challenge some “business as usual” assumptions, and develop strategies we can enact right away to become agents of change within our own work and beyond.
Each workshop in this Institute will be 2 hours long and hosted through Zoom. This time each week includes a lot of discussion, reflection, sharing, and asking questions that are immediately relevant to each participant’s change practice and the barriers they might be facing.
The workshops will include individual reflection, small group breakouts, and large group discussions with exercises designed to:
reflect on our relationship with change
build empathy within our institutions
prioritize the human connections within our work
grow our support network to catalyze collective action.
Your registration also includes:
membership in a private Substack group created specifically for the Institute only
additional opportunities to connect with others in the group to share challenges, successes, and burning questions
reflection prompts, practical tools, and ongoing resources to support your change practice.
Fall Institute Dates and Times:
Tuesday, 9/27, 12:30-2:30pm Eastern (9:30-11:30am Pacific)
Tuesday, 10/4, 12:30-2:30pm Eastern (9:30-11:30am Pacific)
Tuesday, 10/11, 12:30-2:30pm Eastern (9:30-11:30am Pacific)
Tuesday, 10/18, 12:30-2:30pm Eastern (9:30-11:30am Pacific)
You'll receive a Zoom link and follow up details after you sign up. Registration will be capped at about 20 participants, so we can focus on getting to know each other, learn from each other, and build a community of changemakers that we can stay connected with after the institute ends.
Finally, please don’t hesitate to contact me at murawski27@gmail.com if you have any questions!
This work of transformation requires that we build community, and work together in community to support each other. That’s why we need to come together as a collective of changemakers to bring focus and intention to making change happen. That’s why I’m invested in this new series of Institutes, and the work we’re doing here through Agents of Change.
We all have a role in solving our current crises because I believe that we absolutely can transform museums and nonprofits. We can have hope for a better future and begin building that future right now.
It is up to us to choose to step up, be a solution to the problems we’re experiencing, and make this change happen together.