2021 Theme: CHANGE
As we try to move beyond 2020, it is hard not to think about all the changes we have seen and felt. We hope 2021 will serve as a year of reflection on lessons learned and an opportunity to work toward the world we want. Here are some questions and quotes to consider as you consider CHANGE.
Questions
• How is change an opportunity?
• How does social change bring us together and drive us apart?
• In what ways does change build upon or threaten tradition?
• How might we take advantage of these times to create positive change?
• How do we ground and prepare ourselves to be changemakers?
• Why is change terrifying to some and liberating to others?
• What is the relationship between personal and institutional change?
• How have changes to your discipline, profession, or institution shaken things up in the past and present?
• What can we learn from disasters and how they re-shape the way we live, work, and play?
• How have our habits adapted? Are those consequences good, bad, or something else?
• How have faith communities shaped social change movements in the past? How are they shaping—or resisting—adaptation today?
• How do artists and artmaking help us change perspectives, attitudes, and actions?
• How does storytelling change our view of the world and one another?
Quotes
• “Disaster provides a form of societal shock which disrupts habitual, institutionalized patterns of behavior and renders people amenable to social and personal change.” – Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell
• “[I]n our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy, “Three Methods of Reform”
• “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” –Barak Obama, Feb. 5, 2008
• “A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will.” – Spanish Proverb
• “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” – Chinese Proverb
