How to Work with Complexity?

Highlights:

9:38 I love to play inside all of my identities as a black woman as a queen woman as a woman who is dedicated to arts and culture in the south. all these things layer up to make really good stew.

17:15 this practice of making things is new, and it is really exciting, what I have come to understand through it is how working with my hands shifts what I see and think.

22:08 a couple of years ago I took a course in Generative Somatics and was like - I’ll say between generative somatics and a history of ritual, drumming dance, these things around our bodies, are really important for the next iteration of humanity. And it’s about how our bodies are tuned. How we are physically tuned to all the things that are around us at all times.

26:05: At the core we’re complex movements, and complex movements the word complex comes from our collective belief that complexity science gives us a new way to think about how change happens in the world. It moves from critical mass to critical connections.

28:53: One of the things we’re really interested in is what happens inside community. When we talk about strategy we’re not always talking about policy or a campaign, but thinking about what happens when we’re trying to hold each other accountable, what does love have to do with movement work and how is it practiced? What is ancestral memory and how do we pull on it to think about the next step we want to take?

44:52 The core of what I believe is that what we cannot see is more powerful that whan we can see. That’s just a core belief of mine. In addition to that we all have access to more than we know and sometimes the knowing is what gets in the way of what we have access to.

51:46: in our conversation about movement spaces about in or out, that is because we are trying to reduce what’s happening in the space to a sense of sameness when we flip that and lean into complexity those movements of tension or moments of difference are actually some of the most valuable moments in a space and how do we lean into that and not try to excise it and not excise people that we may be aligned with but have disagreements around how do we work through that and work through it to something that didn’t exist before.

Show Notes:

Sage Crump is the New Chief Architect of Emergent Strategy at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. The adoption of the Emergent Strategy Framework articulated by adrienne maree brown, the rapid spread of Emergent Strategy Trainings and the birth of the Ideation Institute are among the most exciting things happening in movement space right now. It is the adoption of a whole new way of thinking about how we do the work of changing everything.

We are lucky to have her in this role. Sage is a wisdom holder, she is a facilitator, an artists with the Complex Movements Artist Collective and a brilliant theory head. Our conversation was as stimulating as it was healing. There is something for you here. Enjoy!

Bio:

Sage Crump is a culture strategist and facilitator who expands and deepens the work of cultural workers, and arts organizations in social justice organizing. Based in New Orleans but working nationally, she believes in leveraging art, creative practice, and the cultural sector to transform systemic oppressions. Sage is a member of Complex Movements, a Detroit-based artist collective whose work interdisciplinary work support local and translocal visionary organizing. Sage is principal and co-founder with artist muthi reed of The Kinfolks Effect (TKE) Studios. TKE studios is an incubation space for multi media interdisciplinary artwork that examines the movement of Blackness through time and space. Sage Crump is the Program Specialist for Leveraging a Network for Equity (LANE) at the National Performance Network. LANE is a 10-year initiative that amplifies the leadership of arts organization of color and rural organizations and grows their ability to thrive in culturally authentic ways. Sage recently joined the Emergent Strategies Ideation institute in the position of Chief Architect. Board Chair for Media Justice and a member of Alternate ROOTS, Sage’s work incorporates complex sciences, emergent strategy and creative practice to imagine the world we want to live in and build strategies and practices that will get us there.