Economic Stimulus from the bottom up:Art, Questions and a TEDTalks video

Project:Forgive postcard#3 by Yvette Dubel

Despite the rhetoric, most economic policy is designed to preserve the status quo rather than address the deep rooted sources causing the problems. There are some things policy can not dictate, like your desires. You have immediate desires and Big Desires. A big desire would be embodied in your hopes for hopes for the world and yourself in that context.

So often businesses, especially smaller enterprises, don't want to take on big issues or develop BIG VISIONS. Remember your business and consumer habits exist in a context we call the world.

One of the reason I had to reconnect my work to my artist practice was that I couldn't help but connect the moving pieces that kept the bigger picture in view for me.Source: Economic Stimulus from the bottom up:A Question, Art, and the Business of Life

In my artist practice, the interconnectedness of the projects I work on is easily visible for me. Wearing my artist hat, I am able to summon greater wisdom than wearing the "strategy consultant" label.

By allowing the work to lead the way, an awesome journey has continued to unfold. One of the things most people have a hard time with is connecting the moving pieces to see the interconnectedness showing them their innovation opportunity. Are you paying attention to your discovery process? Instead of being overwhelmed we can learn to make sense of our interconnectedness and make better strategy decisions.


The postcard from Project:Forgive that I included in this post is part of a series that evolved from Project:what-is-peace? that kicked off Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy back in 2006. The first collaboration was NGO Art Studio in the Republic of Macedonia where I had my first up-close lesson in how international aid can go horribly wrong. Some of the funding for the Peace Day event came from an organization that required that certain speakers be included. Little did I know that these "suggested speakers" were considered war criminals by the residents. It almost brought the peace celebration to a halt as it stirred issues that were never really resolved after the Balkan War.


If meaningless activities can exist and be accepted as performance art then why not meaningful action? Just as any other artist's history shapes their work, so to does my background in advocacy, community development and as a business consultant.

As part of the Art:Works solutions are an integral part of the completed works to advance a peace economy and improve communities.
(Go to webantiphon.com to learn more)

Do you find yourself making statements like these?

I need a long term strategy not just a marketing blitz.

Things are changing so fast, and trying to keep up is exhausting me.

What used to work isnt’ working anymore, and now I don’t know where to turn.

I don’t know what information is meaningful for innovation in my business/organization or industry.

I know we need to make changes, but I don’t know how to recognize innovation.

[caption id="attachment_570" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Cultural Fusion collaboration with NGO Art Studio in Macedonia"][/caption]

In the absence of Peace - things like profit take a nose dive in value. I guess we can call that part of the Business of Life. How do we know this? Because if there is a lack of peace within you, it makes it difficult to enjoy business success. If there is a lack of peace around you, it creates a very difficult environment in which to attain your goals.

So the question of "what is peace?" persisted and raised its head again during a collaboration with a county history museum and a few community leaders heading up the project locally. It was a collaboration that made me question what was really possible given the partners involved. I knew it would be a long term project based on the amount of resistance it encountered early on. Collections for the large scale work continue now, but were halted for a time. As a community project, the objectives were not driven by attainment of profits. Instead this project was focused on developing an open knowledge resource. Lines were drawn in the sand and alliances fortified - making the IT part of the project easy in comparison to the people problems.

Then I began to question the role that forgiveness plays in finding peace. That's when a line from the play Rent grabbed my attention.

The opposite of war isn't peace, its creation!

While politics has historically dictated economic plans and policy, it is important to remember that the political is personal and the personal political. For a number of reasons (which I look at more closely in the book), this became very clear to me after my father's death. I turned my attention again to the personal motivation for aspiring to see Project:what-is-peace? to a satisfying conclusion. For those that don't know, that series is connected to several Regional Economic/Community Development partnerships and initiatives to serve businesses and communities. Economic stimulus from the bottom up takes a quantum leap when we answer the following question.

How do we transform resistance?

[caption id="attachment_532" align="aligncenter" width="188" caption="From Bloodtrails by Yvette Dubel"][/caption]



As much as that is a communal experience of self in relation to - it is also a deeply personal one. It goes to the heart of personal responsibility as the foundation of any social responsibility program or objectives.

It began to seem like a flower sprouting new branching out with new stems which grew new blossoms. Project:Forgive was certainly one of them. Bloodtrails - which spawned the picture above, is a darker piece (deals more with pain and disappointment) that relates to both those projects. However, it is itself part of another collaboration called Touchstone Learnings that generated as its first completed work "Guided by blood trails: Political revelations in learning." That collaborative piece has been accepted for publication so will share more about that when the book is published as part of an anthology later this year.

In addition, exciting progress has been made in defining the scope of the next Touchstone project. While it looks at issues of teacher identity within institutions, it simultaneously informs my personal inquiry. My interest is to increase understanding of the life teachers who bring not just lessons to get students gainful employment, but lessons aimed at living better lives and being better glocal (global-local) neighbors.

No doubt that Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy is an ambitious undertaking, but it is worth the effort....and because I LOVE it, it doesn't feel much like work :)

Social Innovation as Modern Art

I recently started play Empire Avenue and shortly before that I was re-visiting post-it note tabs in Michael Heim's "The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality". I was having a conversation with someone about selecting an Index because my indecisiveness on that had kept me from claiming a profile on Empire for awhile. We had just finished talking about Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy, when I mentioned the book - that's when the documentary in my next post was shared with me.

Our conversation provided more support for contextualizing the validity of the work (Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy) but isolating components for specific conversations is another matter.




As art it is inspired by what I have shared previously in this blog and written about in other documents - as an alternative to protest art: development of a socio-technical infrastructure that achieves the public and market objectives described at the commencement of the series. The basis of my work as an art movement based on research, discovery, creation/development uses collaboration to achieve results toward the goals of public and private sector. This is the source of the Community Change Model developed. Before reducing outcomes to practical results like increasing customer retention or creating more economic opportunities for more people, the bigger context for the enterprise is seen as part of the socio-technical infrastructure and its design/refinement.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="720" caption="TimeLine abstract (i)"][/caption]

There are different Art:Work projects associated with various components. Different kinds of art lend themselves to specific types of objectives, but there is also an impressive amount of overlap. The concept map showing that reduces some of the complexity by focusing on organizing for action planning includes some attached sample material - will be shared exclusively with my subscribers (Sign-Up is FREE, see subscription box on the right @webantiphon.com).

This concept map is a vital part of understanding how the this work in Art Based research can benefit your specific goals and objectives. For the right businesses and collaborating partners this can mean simply maximizing marketing investments, to increase visibility, sales and brand value...or this can be the move that helps increase your enterprise's capacity for innovation.

And to help put the value of this kind of endeavor to develop a more evolved concept IT infrastructure into perspective I share with you this excerpt from pages 38-39 in Heim's "The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality":

"...In contrast with literate cultures of the past, we face an enormous volume of stored information. Our ancestors face the task of slowly learning from experience, of gleaning from life whatever they could discover. They then tried to amplify whatever they could confirm. They learned how to pass along an expanding knowledge base. They stored knowledge impersonally in writing and eventually learned to automate knowledge so that it could become information.

Today our task seems to be the reverse of that of our ancestors...Our task is to hold onto the anchor of our own experience to find meaning in the sea of information...

Hypertext helps us navigate the tide of information. In skipping through hypertexts, we undergo a felt acceleration of time..."

Take Heart - Confessions of a Change Agent

Today is a good day so I am not feeling like the woman in the picture above at the moment, but I have been there. Being a change agent is part choice and part obsession. The commitment has been a choice for me, but the drive to part of leading change has been a life long obsession - it is a core part of who I am. I honestly can't say I know how to be anything other than who/what I am and I wouldn't be happy being otherwise.

Now having said that, let me confess something to you - it can be exhausting, not just for me but for people around me. That's because I eat, sleep and breath Art Based research (Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy) and Community Change Management.
I talk about it, I read about it, I dream about it...

But life work balance is something we all have to pay attention to if we want to avoid burn out. Before I embraced this reality, I experienced burn out when I was working as a community development consultant. The main reason was that my obsession was tainted by persistent frustration. For me the solution was to break free of the community development box, although I am still very much concerned with community development I found that sphere as a sector to be very resistant to change because of its entanglement with politics.

Coming back to my first true love, art was healing for me. Developing Cultural Fusion as an A/r/tographic model for community change answered a call from my soul - it expresses my deepest calling to serve and create. It puts me pack in touch with the way of being that I find is most conducive to supporting those interested in and willing to change.








Re-Thinking the Way We Think About Social Impacts



People who know me are aware that I have been exploring linkages between CRM (customer relationship management) Strategy and CSR (corporate social responsibility) programs for a number of years. Mostly I have met with a good deal of frustration but I’ve come to far to give up now, so when I find enlightening or encouraging news it helps put the wind back in my sails. Lately my attention has been on programs to assist survivors of violence but I also remain engaged in crime prevention and reducing recidivism of ex-offenders.

Recently I was introduced to Social Impact Bonds and it is definitely an encouraging step in the right direction. The paper I am going to link you to shows how the model can be applied to reducing recidivism and government spending. What is inspiring here is the financial investment model – certainly helps address parts of the problem, risk management for socially motivated investments. What they’ve done right….There is no doubt that employment and community support are huge issues in reducing recidivism. In addition to the model discussed in that paper, there is also a need and space for broader understanding based on open research (such as Art Based research) and event sponsorship funding models are worth considering as a less restrictive alternative. Is there an opportunity here for new approaches that tackle multiple dimensions of the problem to be explored and developed? I find that what is missing is support of innovation whereby there is space for discovery and open participation of those impacted.
Read the rest of this post here

Kafka & Art - a new day for learning?

An experimental documentary of a personal and creative journey

Recent research supports the rationale that art that pushes the boundaries of what is known and ushers in new mental models may be just the thing to help teach the masses to apply new mental models.

In the new book I am co-authoring with Ron "The Inner World of Innovation" I explore how new mental models emerge and take shape. In that process I am also producing the body of work and collaborations that have ushered in the realization of Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy.

Why now? Because it is necessary for us to develop new ways of approaching learning, economics and growth. I believe it was Einstein who said (and I will paraphrase) we can't use the same thinking we used to create a problem to fix them...and art is more important that knowledge because art embraces the world.

New research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere.

See Reading Kafka can improve learning

And when you're ready to get started with your Innovation Initiative contact me at WebAntiphon.com

With your Innovation Jump-Start Discovery Session – You leave empowered with the immediate take away value of: 1. Take your business to the next level making innovation easier than you thought possible with Your Customized Tip Sheet on how to use new media to increase awareness of your brands value distinction 2. Simplify your dance with innovation. Discover a new strategy for getting the most out of new media - increase your reach to attract more sales leads 3. Strategy blueprint overview to get started using new media to increase sales revenue by keeping more of your new and existing customers 4. When was the last time you bought your time back? Think about what your time is worth. Get one or more invaluable time saving strategies for implementing your customized blueprint.

Profit Roadmapping Session
You leave empowered with the immediate take away value of:
1. Your Customized Tip Sheet on how to use new media as a PR plug-in to increase awareness of your brands value
2. Discover a new strategy for getting the most out of new media to cost effectively increase brand visibility
3. Strategy Roadmap overview to get started using new media to increase sales by boosting customer retention

Art Based Research in Community Intervention & Mental Health

With the dismantling of community mental health system and the erosion of personal support networks new alternatives must be devised. Currently I am working cf House of Cards series with that forming a recurring imagery/concept to be confronted. In contrast to the typical approach of assuming only bureaucratic systems can explore and solve these challenges, Cultural Fusion is interested in addressing them in the context of self organization, freedom, personalization, social media/technology, ecology, economics and social evolution via art based research.

The results are multilateral solutions, an art series, that combine visual art (performance, media/software, recycled materials, installations, sculpture, paintings) as well as music and audio. That while operating as art, and community intervention – are also operating as business solutions that promote innovation in economic development.

This is an excerpt explaining our collaborative Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy series as a demonstration of the SoulFood model I have been developing as a Source Artist.

While it advances the idea of “Self Referencing Creativity” it has been inspired by key scholarship in the areas of community mental health. As art imbued with this layered integration it seeks to pioneer new approaches to project/product development and management that promote a culture of peace. While at the business or economic level this is best understood from the perspective meaningful marketing, CRM Strategy and Global Social Responsibility; at the personal - community level it is chiefly as an expressive therapy approach to community intervention/prevention strategy.

This work is distinguished by its policy of Radical Inclusion - integrating mental health, arts and culture, history, economic development, and personal development that goes to the roots of several issues including: domestic violence, poverty, crime, depression, a host of “at risk behaviors”, etc. Rather than seeking to exclude needs, each person is allowed the time to identify and distinguish real needs from perceived ones. Resources and “intangible assets” are valued above lacks or deficits.

One of the primary benefits of this approach is its attention to integrity – starting with the integrity and transparency of the SoulFood:Ingredients included in any given project recipe. Here in this paper attention is on the community mental health model and theories that were the basis of the early inquiry into this work.

In beginning to approach community economic renewal my instinct was to go to the weakest links first – homeless, those needing mental health services, neglected seniors, those living in economic poverty, and the disenfranchised (included the previously incarcerated). The point of Radical Inclusion is that the needs of all sides seeking inclusive expression need to be brought to the table and integrated into the Recipe.

Client engagement is critical, and this is the basis of using interactive high art concepts with multiple components that also operate on the level of a project-based expressive therapy approach as opposed to traditional cognitive therapy to deliver community mental health intervention/prevention programs.

Primary experience, which exists apart from language, is described by language (a representation, or secondary experience). Language is that secondary experience created by verbalizing primary experiences. Verbal psychotherapy, then, is a procedure for the verbal processing of verbal descriptions of events. According to discourse theory, language constructs its own reality rather than corresponding to it.

Among those practitioners who use them for the purpose of representation, action methods generally are regarded as more vivid and memorable and having more impact than verbal methods. Action methods simultaneously engage cognition, affect, and behavior and better engage those clients who process information predominantly in visual and kinesthetic modes. When used as interventions, action methods provide novel ways of altering habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

According to some psychological theories, formative experiences that occurred at a preverbal stage of development can be accessed only by nonverbal methods. Also, there is evidence that traumatic experiences are stored or encoded differently from non-traumatic ones, suggesting that experiential therapies may have the potential to shift traumatic experience in cases in which verbal ones cannot.

“The map is not the territory.” Action methods get clients to venture into the territory of experience, enriching those clients who have come to rely solely on the maps of verbalization. Experiencing these methods provides both a way of discovery in terms other than verbal ones and material that can be juxtaposed with verbally encoded representations. In sum, action methods put verbalizations to the test of experience.

Although psychotherapy will continue to be a verbally mediated process, the inclusion of action methods appears to promote significant clinical change in relatively short periods of time, making them particularly valuable in brief therapy and with populations not very responsive to talk-only therapy.

Why use an empowerment-based model? Empowerment may be defined as a process through which people become strong enough to participate within, share in the control of, and influence events and institutions affecting their lives; in part, empowerment implies that people gain particular skills, knowledge, and sufficient power to influence their lives and the lives of those they care about (Torre, 1985). The process of empowerment is ongoing and involves changes in three dimensions of one’s self: personal, interpersonal, and sociopolitical participation.

The personal (self-perception) dimension involves attitudes, values, and beliefs about self-awareness, self-acceptance, belief in self, self-esteem, and the feeling that one has rights. The interpersonal dimension involves acquisition of knowledge and skills, assertiveness, setting limits on giving, asking for help, problem solving, accessing resources, critical thinking to participate and work with others in networks and systems of mutual aid and education in order to enhance the world they live in. The political dimension involves participation by joining appropriate social organizations, giving back by helping others, making a contribution, voting, writing letters, teach others what is learned, and taking control in generalized areas of one’s life are specific skills that will be cultivated during participation in this fully implemented program.

The underlying assumption of empowerment practice is that clients are generally disempowered through membership in devalued and oppressed groups; that the system of governmental policies and services is a barrier to achieving desired goals; and that learned powerlessness is an attribute of many clients (Albert and Green, 2002). Therefore, practical empowerment attends to power issues and promotes the creation and discovery of personal and group empowerment among clients.

Affirmational Psychology a later model I learned of that contributed to the work and let to a few major project collaborations.


It is my hope that in sharing this document that others who have similar interests....working in related areas will contact me. I have finally had a breakthrough in visually connecting this series as it evolves and organizing the huge amount of content I have already generated. In conclusion a few links to key pages in the Development Workspace:
Cultural Fusion Futurist
This is one of the primary projects - an installation called cf House of Cards Installation i
Defining Installation for SoulFood context

Lovely dream, but what does it take to see it happen?

Bernard Lietaer talks about the relationship between the money system and sustainability

While there are those within institutions that see the problem, I find there are far less who understand the fundamental issues that are being ignored that will have a dramatic impact on the outcomes expected from current investments of majority of attention and resources.

In Cultural Fusion I find an opportunity to explore a radically different conceptual basis for open system organizations or frameworks. Art based solutions allow a depth and breadth of perspective that does not seem possible (or natural)within knowledge silos or through the lens of judgment.

After I get this sorted out I will move most of it to the comfusion an new Oci Novosti websites.

Instead of telling someone else what they should not do, what would happen if I paid attention to what I was doing? Then it is more natural to be inspired - paying attention without negative emotional charge. And that's an important part of flexibility of perspective.




Had a chance to work on revisions to my play, tentatively called "In Your Own Backyard". One of the big issues now resolved was framing a tawdry drama inspired by my early observations and frustrations developing multifaceted programs to address homelessness/poverty/domestic violence/HIV/AID prevention and interventions within a specific community.

The play explores first the region as community. It is a hot spot for STDs including HIV/AIDS, political corruption, intangible deficits of all kinds and how they translate into a series of events that will redefine community and define a region for decades.

It was inspired by three southern communities ranking first, second and third in the nation for chlamydia and syphilis. After noticing discrepancies in the local numbers for the counties and CDC (center for disease control). Closer attention to what was driving these stats and how a drama

I learned what "community revitalization" really means. It is part of that Orwellian inspired industry of Spin Doctoring, which one refers to the people who manage dialgues. This seems intended to suggest a distance between the the carrying out of a misdeed and spinning of it.



Based on my observations I developed this idea to engage more people in the BIG ISSUES by breaking them down to a scale of impact that people can conceptualize. The time for this to happen is sooner rather than later.

In times of distress - domestic abuses increases. This has never been a good situation but in light of mandatory furloughs for state social intervention agencies and insufficient funding of community based programs - without attention could have increasingly tragic results.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008 :As families confront the impact of the current economic crisis, social service agencies across the US are seeing growing numbers of cases of domestic violence and child abuse. The correlation between financial stress and the growing incidence of such cases is shown in increased calls to hotlines, visits to emergency rooms and the utilization of social services and shelters.

My informal survey from contacts I have in grassroots advocacy report a similar story...shelters are seeing almost daily increases. Considering the numbers falling through the cracks before all this the prospects are troublesome of more being doomed to be cast in invisible shadows. Although no one will say the words, actions and priorities speak quite clearly about what (who) is valued and who is not.
For example, what is the message when billions are committed to financial sector bail out due to circumstance they created, and cut backs for those that serve the people impacted? These messages are internalized and to play out to have political, social and economic impact on larger scales.

Looking at my own little sphere of "what can i do?" I am allowing expressions of solutions in the context of seeing what is being dealt with and transformed.

I could write more white papers, articles, research papers but fewer people would digest the information. Therefore the impact would be limited because it would perpetuate an underlying belief about value or rather values.


Tiger Woods A Game

Today Jeremy reminded me of what it takes for Tiger Woods to maintain his A Game. Listen to the show to see what he said about that.



Of course most of us know this intellectually - many of us want it for ourselves. But how many people think of this for people who are considered poor, who have survived being abused, or witnessing abuse overcoming serious odds to break cycles of violence?

It is no secret that these questions are connected to issues of incarceration because a significant number of people in prison could have been diverted with successful intervention providing them with personal development tools alongside opportunities to realize their potential professionally, and express themselves creatively.

I am writing my play as a series of connected stories because I want to explore the complexity of this tangled set of "facts" and observations for example - Consider that at least sometimes privatization of prisons has been used as a perverted kind of economic stimulus and redistricting tool. If we want to reduce crime - increase the peace - -then it is important that we begin to see where the underlying attributes are institutionalized?

Who is considering the long term impact of this kind of thinking?
And regardless of what your ideas are about the situation, the reality is that are more people are released from prison we must find way to
1.minimize the damage to children left behind
2. successfully re-integrate them into society if we want to reduce crime and the costs of managing the crisis caused.

There have been numerous academic studies and policy reports and journalistic accounts analyzing our prison boom, but this phenomenon cannot be fully measured in numbers.....America is expert at turning citizens into convicts, but we've forgotten how to transform convicts back into citizens...And so the legacy of our prison boom continues—and we continue to be defined by our desire for punishment and revenge, rather than by our belief in the power of redemption.

Now to be honest as I write this I know it is not an easy thing to learn forgiveness but having dealt with these issues personally I believe the rewards are worth the effort.

It is no small thing to have ones self survive and thrive despite such harsh conditions. When people have been encouraged by something i shared, i feel that i have been given a gift. To avert the worse case scenarios we have to set about the business of creating alternative structures and programs that can support regional collaborations. However, I believe that what a region is will come to be redefined with the evolution of cyberinfrastructure.

BUT what can we learn from people that make it? What is making it?

I am learning to be curious about what others believe before jumping to judgment. Does the need for resistance decrease and does less resistance translate into more efficiency over the longer term. By that i mean might it be worth looking at how personal intervention - focused on those that are already committed and motivated but just need access to resources pay off many times over.

What changes if we make that adjustment in our attitude?

"FREE Video Reveals The Amazing Money-Making Secrets Of A 28-Year Old Convicted Felon Who Earned $100 Million Dollars in Online Advertising!"


Because much of what has been done will not work in this emerging context- it is important to identify what information to build upon- that which can shift much faster than our organizational dinosaurs, individuals creating the trends in P2P, open source, social enterprise development, employment & social media will command the expected attention.