2022 Conference
Educate-Organize-Advocate Conference 2022
Our 2022 conference was held as series of sessions on three dates in October, as a component of UMKC’s Social Justice Month. The Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute facilitated the sessions. Participants were invited join us for the keynote presentation on October 6, and one of the two subsequent workshops on October 13 or October 27.
Emergent Strategy Keynote
Thursday, October 6, 2022 | 4:00pm – 5:30pm CST | Virtual | Speaker: adrienne maree brown
During this session learn all about the Emergent Strategy philosophy. Learn how to acknowledge the real power of change and be in right relationship to it. The desire to deepen relationships, build trust, and political alignment are key objectives in this work.
adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through her multi-genre writing, her music and her podcasts. Informed by 25 years of movement facilitation, somatics, Octavia E Butler scholarship and her work as a doula, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas and practices for transformation. She is the author/editor of seven published texts and the founder of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, where she is now the writer-in-residence.
Emergent Strategy Workshops (Register for one workshop)
During each session we will learn to bring the principles and elements of emergent strategy – which include adaptation, interdependence, collaborative ideation, fractal thinking, transformative justice and resilience through decentralization – into our work. During these sessions, we use science fiction as a tool to practice strengthening imagination and capacity to think beyond the limitations of socialization – beyond competition, beyond binaries, and beyond linear, short-term outcomes. We also invite in cultural practices – like song circles, altar/community power table creation, and space for play and dance – that engage the subtle, yet powerful spiritual and emotional needs of people in the room to foster connection, trust, and bring forth the multiplicity of their intelligences.
Emergent Strategy Workshop #1
Thursday, October 13, 2022 | 4:00pm – 5:30pm CST | Virtual | Facilitator: Kawanza Billy
Kawanza Billy (she/her) is Founder and Social Impact Strategist at K.Billy Push, a consulting company dedicated to creating community-centered social impact initiatives. Kawanza received her B.A. from The City University of New York at John Jay College, where she majored in Political Science, concentrating in Urban and Community Affairs. Though she’s been organizing for change since she was 12, her advocacy career started as an outreach coordinator in Southeast, Queens, Harlem, and Brooklyn. Since moving to Washington, DC, she’s served in numerous roles at education companies and nonprofits, building coalitions, and strategic partnerships, developing programs, and leading community engagement initiatives. D.C. is also where she was introduced to emergent strategy, liberatory design, and popular education techniques and tools, which have grounded her work. Currently, she manages youth advocacy and community service campaigns, focusing on education, environmental justice, and public health programs. When Kawanza isn’t facilitating or designing sustainable solutions, she serves as National Advocacy Chair for the National Urban League Young Professionals. For wellness, she creates nutritious and delicious recipes, produces cultural content, and is a nap ministry practitioner.
Emergent Strategy Workshop #2
Thursday, October 27, 2022 | 4:00pm – 5:30pm CST | Virtual | Facilitator: chelsea cleveland
chelsea cleveland (they/them) is a multi-racial Black non-binary person who is also queer, fat, disabled, a Black feminist, and a sci-fi/weirdo thinker from New London, CT. They have done facilitation work in Connecticut and across the country for over a decade. chelsea also helped co-found Hearing Youth Voices, an intergenerational youth-focused Black community organizing group where they wore many hats such as organizer, facilitator, and Program Director. They are currently an Emergent Strategy Facilitator with Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. They have created curriculum and led trainings on abolition, white supremacy, anti-blackness, racial monopoly capitalism, Black queer feminism, gender & sexuality, envisioning our Black Futures, and much more.
2022 Conference Sponsors & Partners
