Imagine connection – what does it feel like and how can we build it?
“Is human nature separatism, tribalism and passionate distrust of the ‘other’? Or is it co-operation, recognition and, provided basic needs are met, a live-and-let-live attitude to all? What’s your [...]
Having one good friend can make a difference
Leisure as an instrument for impact Leisure time is an amazing time. It is the time that you enjoy and makes you feel alive. However, Leisure is more. [...]
A Homage to Design Thinking
“The future is fiction and with every choice, we are writing that future now.” Designing Our Future Humanity’s future does not look charming. With [...]
Play-Fight practice: a journey of connection
In the autumn of 2019, I participated in the Movement Immersion camp organized by the Formless Arts collective. This is where I first encountered the Play-Fight practice which proved [...]
Can we learn from our past instead of repeating it?
In this article I mean to share some personal thoughts that arose after watching ‘Landscapes of resistance’ (2021), by Serbian director Marta Popivoda. The movie touched me and triggered [...]
The Creation of Thinking
Out-of-the-box thinking is a well-known phrase in creative thinking. Already from an early age, creative thinking should be stimulated in the development and growth of children. Called the 21st-century [...]
Dancing to change the world – the role of embodiment and performing arts in societal transformation
Picture from an embodiment workshop I facilitated for a group of Performatory students together with Suzan Lindhout. In the search for my own practice as transformative social innovator, I [...]
Rebelling for Regenerative Cultures
For an Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest about a year ago, I was asked to give a speech about regenerative cultures. It was recorded through a Facebook livestream video which [...]
Sympathy Sucks
Okay, not always. But hear me out, sympathy will not lead to the needed radical transformations in society. Empathy will. How would you feel about getting hit by [...]
Climate justice – what is it and what does it make us feel
(Extinction Rebellion Netherlands, 2021) One of the topics that is important for me as a transformative social innovator is climate justice. The climate crisis is an issue I feel [...]
What about the commons?
For this blog I recorded a radio episode together with another friend with whom I live together in the community in Vlaardingen. We talk about the concept of the [...]
Vlaardingen Commons
In this blog I will talk about Vlaardingen Commons - a commons-based project for fairer urban housing. This is my graduation project, on which I am working right now [...]
The Climate Movement and its Connection to Inclusion
My story began two years ago when I was navigating my way through the Personal Expedition. The Personal Expedition is a 14-week course where we, social innovators, research societal [...]
A social innovator profile
Hi! My name is Noemi Bardas, and I am currently a transformative social innovation student. In my study, as well as personally, I am interested in how we can [...]
The expedition towards more accessibility within Leisure
We are busy people these days. We work to earn money, we exercise to meet our physical needs, take care of ourselves and others. After we’ve put in all [...]
Understanding Society by Diving into our Past
What does it mean to be equal? How are we different from each other? Why is our society the way it is? To be understood is as important as [...]
The Helpful City of Den Bosch over the Years
From “Bossche bollen” to “Bossche koek”, the city of Den Bosch is the home of many treats that will satiate your hunger for “Brabant” goodness. The capital city of [...]
Feel free to act
Societies across the world are facing many complex and interwoven challenges—poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, demographic change, discrimination, and violence—that threaten our efforts to enable people everywhere to live a [...]
“With great power comes great responsibility”
The Netherlands is a wealthy country, and while we can discuss how that wealth is distributed, we cannot deny that things are going well here. On a global [...]
A mirror
As a social innovator, when facilitating stakeholders through complex challenges, you might encounter conflicts on all kinds of levels: heated conflicts, or it might just be differences in perspectives [...]
From conflict to progression
The main theme of my previous blog was that to truly change systems, we should shift the relational conditions that hold a problem in its place, and improve the [...]
Shifting relational conditions
I believe that we “should never lose sight of what we believe could be.” This quote by renowned acting teacher William Esper (2008) has been a guiding principle to [...]
The end of the beginning..
Can you ever be truly finished? I believe not. For now, this is the final blog that I write while being a student at Performatory. Yet, I do not [...]
The underestimated power of social relationships for our well-being
I am not a psychologist who can help people with their state of mind, neither a virologist who can indicate when the virus will slowly lose its power of [...]
A personal insight into my thoughts
You do not know how it feels until you experience it yourself. In this case, I hoped that I would never get to know how it feels. Yet, sometimes [...]