Hey, guess what? You’re in!

No application requirements, no admission fee — not even that uncomfortable week or two where you go back and forth trying to decide, “Do I have time for this? Is it worth it? Can I afford it?”

None of that. Because, voilà!

You’ve been accepted to heART❤️SCHOOL.

The recording below describes what heART❤️SCHOOL aims to address (you know, little things like solving the world’s problems🤓), and the experiments embedded in it. Why? Because the way things have been done — well, they’re not working so well anymore. It’s time for some serious re-imagining. A bit more thinking-with-our-hearts, not just our minds.

Take a listen, and I’ll tell you more about the why below.

The Back Story

During my recent sabbatical, I stepped back to examine things I’d been offering, like the Possibilities Lab and in-studio workshops. How could I detach from “the way things are done” and rethink big ideas like capitalism and education, but on my own tiny, manageable scale?

In other words, how could I make my whole business into a “possibilities lab?”

heART❤️SCHOOL is my design-as-I-go experiment for doing just that. Instead of being overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle, what if we practiced different ways of thinking and doing? Rather than throwing our hands up in despair about how polarized our politics have become, let’s make small but important shifts in the words we use, the way we interact with our environment, the things we do with our bodies, and the way we connect with the people around us.

Because as Ashley C Ford says, “It’s not enough to think about changing the world on a grand scale. It IS enough to think about changing the life of one person.”

I’m excited to offer this experimental journey, focused on little adjustments made by individuals like me and you. Together, we can make a difference.

What You Can Expect

I’m retraining my perfectionist-leaning self to practice ease and good-enough. Therefore heART❤️SCHOOL will “meet” (so to speak) on my current blogging schedule — the one that took me nine years to figure out!

It looks like this, in case you’re new around here: On the 3rd of each month you’ll get a WORDS post delivered to your inbox, then PICTURES on the 13th, and SOUND on the 23rd. (This only happens when you’re on my email list, so click here to sign up if you haven’t yet.)

During this session of heART❤️SCHOOL, which may or may not last the whole darn 2021-22 school year, the emails will be centered around a monthly theme. The first one (starting with today’s recording) is AGENCY.

Your Agency Has Already Been Activated

I think of agency as the act of knowing you have a choice.

Your agency is activated from the start, because of course you can delete all of my emails and not participate at all. Or you can jump in with both feet and do all the suggested exercises. Or any level in between, as you have time*, interest, and inclination.

You’ll have access to everything — I’m not saving the best stuff for paying members only, as is the standard practice these days — and you get to decide whether to pay nothing ever, or whether to buy me the occasional cup of coffee. (In today’s recording, I said I didn’t have my Ko-fi account set up yet, but then I went and set it up. But honestly, you might want to stick around and see what the heck I’m talking about before making any financial decisions. 😉)

Homework/Practice/Exercises which are obviously optional

I know! It’s the first day of School, and there’s already homework! 🤪 I explain more in the recording, but for this first session on agency I invite you to:

1) Check your language. Are you turning over your power to cultural notions of time and busy-ness, rather than being honest about the choices you make about how you spend your time? What does “I’m too busy” really mean?
2) Use your body in a way that used to bring you joy when you were younger. Hacky-sack, maybe? Hitting a tennis ball against the wall? Cartwheels in the grass? See what happens — but maybe stretch first.

Don’t get it? Don’t worry.

If you’re completely confused by everything I’m saying here today, I get it. Don’t worry, it’s an experiment, and it’s still evolving. Plus, there’s no such thing as “behind” in heART❤️SCHOOL. I do think that if you stick around, you’ll be glad you did.

In the spirit of imagining possibilities,
Pam

*I address this, in terms of agency, in today’s recording.