Current Offerings

Strategy

Whenever possible, planning for changemaking offers us the opportunity to pathfind our way towards a better future. Who are you accountable to? What are their needs? How are your organization's efforts adequately addressing and honoring the needs of your beneficiaries? What is your role within the social change ecosystem? Grounding in your vision(s) and values, we will take a holistic exploration into the contextual landscapes that your efforts exist within, before charting out a detailed blueprint that remains emergent to both external factors and your group’s internal capacities. A snapshot of this work includes:

❖ Internal Conditions Mapping

❖ Ecosystem Mapping

❖ Root Cause Analysis

❖ Sociopolitical Landscape Analyses

❖ Power Mapping

❖ Resources Assessment

We don't think of strategy out of nowhere; we think of it in relation to the main contradiction, the opportunities for action.” - shea howell

Narrative Development

“In the same way that constellations are a part of the galaxy, narratives are part of culture.” - Nayantara Sen

Narrative change is more than crafting a compelling story. It is record keeping. Social stewardship. Cultural chronicling. This act requires those whose experiences and social realities have been purposely distorted or unintentionally mishandled by others to reclaim their truth. This reparative and restorative process interrogates culture and language, revealing how the stories we share mold, echo and illuminate the ways we understand ourselves and the social fabric we are entrenched in. Whether your group is nurturing spaces of belonging and solidarity, or disrupting harmful narratives, we will co-weave framing strategies that resonate more deeply and authentically. Some of this work could include:

❖ Developing a narrative toolkit or a communications plan that includes beneficiary/audience-specific framing, messaging and call to actions

❖ Capturing and understanding the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of your audience around particular issue areas

Visioning Facilitation

“Our visions begin with our desires.” - Audre Lorde

Our visions - what we dream and believe is possible - guide the direction of our work and where your organization places its collective energy. Using various modes of expression, worldbuilding activities and other possibility gathering techniques, we will activate, engage and expand your team's imaginative depths. This experience is designed to help individuals and groups imagine the future not from a place of fear, anxiety or urgency, but from their soul’s yearning for true alignment.

Engagements can be tailored to your group’s needs: half-day workshops, multi-session retreats for deeper collective visioning, or longer-term partnership that embeds visioning into strategic planning, narrative work or evaluations. A snapshot of this offering includes the following sessions:

  • From social conditioning to internalized criticisms, our imaginations have long been held captive by forces that shape what we consider possible, desirable, and acceptable. These constraints operate at multiple levels and interact in ways that hinder our individual and collective capacity to see beyond what currently exists.

    Visioning is not a luxury; it is the seed and soil that roots our realities, the spark whose flame never truly fades, a muscle to be massaged. By naming the forces that limit our imaginations, nurturing creativity that loosens these constraints, and resourcing play practice, we can restore our confidence in creating a more vibrant, safer, loving, healthier world.

    ** This offering is also available for individuals not associated with an organization or initiative.

  • Since the beginning of time, dreams and visions have fascinated, entranced and shaped humanity. We will explore the rich and multifaceted influence that dreaming, visioning and imagining have had culturally, spiritually and practically across cultures.

    ** This offering is also available for individuals not associated with an organization or initiative.

  • You are invited to step outside of others’ imaginations and reorient into your own inner world. We will engage each of our senses and reconstruct our understanding and relationship to time, space and place.

    These gatherings create a container for sensing, deepening discernment, and generative imagination practice.

    ** This offering is also available for individuals not associated with an organization or initiative.

  • Collaborative social change efforts often bring together people and groups with different experiences, power, priorities, and ideas of what progressive change looks like. When multiple visions emerge, tensions can arise that - when left unchecked - stall momentum and erode trust. How can we find authentic alignment while moving through human complexity? What role do our values play in anchoring us? We will un-romanticize solidarity work by exploring practical ways to find and honor your shared visions, and recalibrate for deeper alignment in order to build fuller futures together.

Liberatory Evaluation & Research

“Research is formalized curiosity...It is a seeking that [they] who wish may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.“

- Zora Neale Hurston

Evaluation touches many facets of social life, and our field floats in a unique and intermediary space within the broader social change ecosystem. We get to collectively decide if evaluation is the bridge that disrupts or reinforces systems of superiority.

- lisa sargent

We are a curious people. Exploring these curiosities and seeking to understand the world around us are innate to the human experience. They fuel our movements, influence how we alchemize our resources and energy for change, and leave us wondering what legacy our efforts will leave behind.

I believe research & evaluation are moments to witness, understand & value change. Centering decolonial and culturally responsible frameworks, a few examples of how I can support your group might look like:

❖ Evaluating the effectiveness and/or social value of your programming (Are we offering what our beneficiaries and communities actually need? Are we doing it well?)

❖ Assessing your group's internal capacities and appetite for equity work (Do we have the willingness, capacity and commitment to doing what is needed to do the right work?)

❖ Measuring your organization's impact and social change footprint (What impact are we truly creating?)

❖ Measuring movement health

❖ Replacing vanity metrics with indicators that illustrate narrative and/or initiative complexities

❖ Building out and implementing a research plan based on your unique inquiries

connect@liminalspaceslab.com

© 2024. Liminal Spaces Lab LLC. All rights reserved.