Welcome to another issue of Censemaking.
It’s hot beverage season, so I’m in good spirits. It’s always a good time for a coffee, but now it’s an extra good time — whether pumpkin spice is your thing or not.
In this issue, we’ve got everything from Halloween comics on evaluation, stories on why bedtime is excellent for creativity, podcasts on change, and some examples of how to speed up policymaking and much more.
Whether you’re listening, learning, or just enjoying something to meditate on as you enjoy your latest hot beverage, I hope you find some gems to stoke your creativity and support your work.
Thanks for reading and subscribing - Cameron
"Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." — Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
Coffee Talk
This week, we’re talkin’ (like millions of others) about eras. No, not that one.
era
îr′ə, ĕr′ə
noun
A period of time as reckoned from a specific date serving as the basis of its chronological system.
A period of time characterized by particular circumstances, events, or personages.
Taylor Swift’s economic shaking tour (and film) aside, an era is when we mark a shift in situations — either beginning or end. It’s feeling like we are at one of these time points. A lot is happening, and something feels a little off. David Moscrop argues the path forward is through collective action and community.
Both ideas are about interconnected change-making — coming and working together in some ways that are coordinated. To make collective action work, we need shared ways of conceiving things (even if we do not always agree on those things). Can we do this in an age of social AI? Recent events in the Middle East have brought us a torrent of fake, altered or misleading stories aimed to sway our points of view. I’ve personally witnessed people I respect and admire engage in monstrous behaviour online in reaction to what’s happened, having lost any semblance of the balance, kindness and perspective they had before the conflict. It’s sad. It’s also worrying.
Creating a community involves a common, shared space (spatial and cultural). This means making many small changes, accommodations, and openings of mind and widening of perspective. To live in a community means co-creating something with people for the collective benefit, even if that means less benefit for us as individuals. It also means finding space to speak to what is true — whatever that truth is. Coffee time this week offers a chance to converse, reflect and dwell on that, not on media. I wish coffee could solve the problems of the day. Maybe it could?
Change By Design: Making and Creating
Mike Taylor’s weekly newsletters and website are beneficial to teachers and learners. His 2023 Top 10 Learning Tools list is another of his generous offerings to teachers and learners offering the best tech tools to help you learn and share what you know.
Innovation comes through design. Design begins with curiosity. The Five Dimensions of Curiosity profiles a model developed to describe how to cultivate and use curiosity to solve problems and explore situations, helping you make better things.
Policy change is often slow-going. Tom Babin profiles how the city of Vancouver managed to explore, build, study, and scale bike lanes quickly by taking an active, community-engaged and data-driven approach to policymaking.
Why do you feel creative in the shower or at bedtime? Relaxation is one reason. There are others, and Nir Eyal explores these in an article that shows why you might want to keep a notebook near your bed next time you’re looking for inspiration.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have - Maya Angelou
The Art & Science of Change
Standardized tests are everywhere, and they probably shouldn’t be — at least, that’s what the science says. The Decision Lab has a tremendous evidence-based profile of the culture, use, and misuse of standardized testing.
If you work with others, you undoubtedly have meetings. Why can’t we get meetings right? This question and the answers that Sanyin Siang offers speak to the way we design a culture of sharing, learning, and communication. I found it helpful.
Birds aren’t real. That absurd statement is at the core of this enlightening, funny, and disturbing TED Talk that explores the science and practice of conspiracy cultures. You can learn a lot about how we believe things and the role of community in it all.
The fantastic crew at Habit Weekly has published an AI Tools Database for behavioural science practitioners. This free evergreen list offers tools, resources, and academic papers that look at AI and behavioural science.
Joy is the engine of growth. Play is oxygen. Learn to play, and you’ll stay young forever - Stuart Brown
Impact and Value
It’s Halloween season, and Chris Lysy, an evaluator and designer, has his annual evaluation comics devoted to the season and the scary (and funny) things evaluators face when communicating and doing their work.
Results-based accountability is a tool/approach to support evaluation and community impact. Clear Impact has a helpful article on how to support the implementation of RBA into practice that can help you get on your way.
Principles can help us through the challenges posed by complexity — guiding our strategy and evaluation in times of mass change. I explore this issue as part of the toolkit series on Censemaking and how it can help guide your strategy and impact.
Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world - Brené Brown
Look and Listen
I had the honour of being the guest of Nita Lakhani and Sylvia Szkudlarek from SIC Health as part of their On The Edge podcast, speaking on the subject of change by design. It was a great chat — and coffee
Geoff Wilson’s latest podcast season focuses on breathwork, and his latest episode on The Healing Path for the Masculine brings former pro football player and military veteran Ryan Carey over for a chat. Toxic masculinity, recovery, healing, and what it means to connect to ourselves and each other are among the many insightful points raised in this important conversation.
Thanks for reading and being a part of the Censemaking readership. Comments are welcome, sharing is encouraged.
Until next time - keep the coffee on,
Cameron