A two-session workshop for leaders — official or not — navigating uncertainty and new beginnings, for themselves or a broader community
Facilitator: Ose Schwab
Guest artist: TBD
Dates: TBD – November or February
Are you facing uncertainty in a new endeavor, role, or vision? Join this two-session workshop for leaders — official or not — including educators, artists, activists, and community builders in Malden and Greater Boston.
Drawing on Theory U and an artist’s own process — sketch, put aside, revisit — this workshop invites reflection, deep listening, and a shift in perspective. Attendees will experience what can emerge when they let go of worry and control, and practice stretching out the canvas for what wants to happen next.
What to Expect
- Introductions — who you are, and what you’re grappling with as you lead
- A plain-language grounding in Theory U
- Interactive sketching exercises with an artist, applied to real-world contexts
- Time between sessions to let your sketch — and your thinking — sit, before revisiting both
Jazz improvisation mirrors the skills changemakers need today: deep listening, trust, experimentation, and responding in real time to what emerges. Integrating this creative practice into the workshops will make the learning both practical and memorable.
For a dive into jazz as wisdom for living and evolving, consider this lecture series “The Ethics of Jazz:” The Norton Lectures, Harvard University, February 2014.
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About the image: The chambered nautilus is a deep-sea cephalopod that has lived largely unchanged for over 400 million years. Its spiral shell is divided into a series of gas-filled chambers, connected by a tube called the siphuncle, which lets it regulate the gas and fluid inside — adjusting its buoyancy to rise or sink through the water. As the animal grows, it builds a new, larger chamber and moves forward into it, sealing the old one behind but never discarding it. We see this creature as exemplifying a quiet, internal way of moving through change — adjusting from within rather than forcing against what’s outside. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/chambered-nautilus