Dear Friends,

We invite you to join us in Detroit for our fifth HowWe Will:Threefolding Our Cultural Revolution. This year’s theme is Landing the Future – Action Research for Cultural Renewal.

We have three Leadership Journey tracks: Initiative Deep Dive with like minded initiative takers from Detroit and around the country; Working Side By Side with Bart Eddy, staff and the youth of the Brightmoor Maker Space; and Towards a School of the Future, a youth led peer to peer conversation around imaginative ideas of what a school of the future could look like which they will share on Presentation Weekend.

Initiative Deep Dive
Theory U, a leadership journey created by Otto Scharmer of M.I.T, will be the foundation for a deep dive into the biography of our initiatives where we will listen deeply, problem solve together, and prototype a pathway into the future. Dottie Zold and Frank Agrama of the Elderberries/ALIANT community, will lead the journey to create a safe container to explore what Otto Scharmer calls ‘going through the eye of the needle.’ Why have we ourselves chosen this work, How does this define the work we do today and What has to shift in us in order to bring our best work forward: discovering and recovering that inner place from which we are working from, can strengthen and unite us with others towards a common goal.

Working Side by Side
The Brightmoor Maker Space (BMS) is dedicated to youth employment, social entrepreneurship and community transformation through practical hands-on skill development that aligns with the goals of the Brightmoor Education Action Team (BEAT) and their “Brightmoor Be Healed” neighborhood initiative. The most recent projects of the BMS include outdoor classrooms and study desks for home bound children. After lunch each day, we will come together for peer-to-peer conversations led by Michael Reid, Melody Brink, Frank Agrama and Zuri Burns, learning new skills with creative capacities emerging, including storytelling, earth healing with Dan McManus, and the question: How does a School of the Future live in your Heart?

Towards a School of the Future
What kinds of relationships will we need to build educationally nourishing communities, person to person – mentor to mentee – co-worker to co-worker – group to group. How can we build vitality of relationship to heal, protect and build up our social soil.

If you’d like to join the Deep Dive Biography track, we will send you questions for a Case Study that each will present in the shared learning journey we will take together, along with U Leadership and Deep Listening tools; the Five Principles of the U that we will work with throughout the week. The book we are working with is Leading from the Emerging Future by Otto Scharmer.