The Illuminative Method
Research Project, Doctoral Study
The research underneath the lab · Doctoral study, Fielding Graduate University
Notice when you feel the planet holding itself together. Write it down. Tell someone.
For ten years I gave groups of adults this assignment. They tracked the moments that felt like synchronicity, love, wholeness or appreciation, and recorded them as video, sound, drawings and journal entries. Then they taught each other what they were good at in those moments, and together designed new courses, programs and objects.
The method has seven steps: Notice, Document, Share, Identify, Teach, Link, Collaborate.
The study borrowed a question from Lovelock and Margulis’s Gaia hypothesis: if the planet regulates itself, could moments of love and connection be part of how it does? I’m still exploring.
It began in my sketchbooks, became my doctoral study, and now runs underneath everything I make, from Adult Life Lab to the book I’m writing.
Presented at DePaul School for New Learning; ACHE; ACM Creativity and Cognition; UC Berkeley; Jossey-Bass Online Teaching and Learning Conference; and Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs, 2009), SCAD and MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.
