Creativity and Tools of Conviviality
for Transforming
Toxic Eco-systems and Social Relations

Inspired by our ancestors such as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Social Innovation Lab – conceptualized at Howard University’s Department of Sociology and Criminology before the pandemic – became a launching pad for an intergenerational, interracial, and transcultural moonshot initiative that bridges local to national to global.

We support communities that are working on equitable, democratic re-assemblage (actor network theory) by using tools of conviviality (Ivan Illich) and integrative thinking to resolve complex challenges of social and racial justice, historical trauma, and sustainable urbanism.

With a focus on the social determinants of mental health, we seek to address the inter-connected issues of

  • discrimination

  • housing crisis

  • food security

  • mass incarceration

  • exclusion

  • the debilitating impact of cognitive biases.

Our Lab is dedicated to deploying the power of creativity and conviviality to transform toxic eco-systems and social relations. We engage in experiential, self-directed, and lifelong learning in partnership with other institutions including colleagues at Stanford University. Building a network of networks involves inter-sectoral collaboration as recommended by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to improve the culture of health.

The Lab opens its space to collaborate and cross-pollinate among visionary scientists, sociologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, historians, lawyers, journalists, economists, engineers, musicians, dancers, actors, filmmakers, artists, activists, chefs, architects, philosophers, political theorists, diplomats, and business, union, civic and faith leaders.

The initiative aims at influencing public policy and, ultimately, changing social norms by connecting macro, meso and micro through employing an experimental and iterative process.

In The Conference of the Birds – a Persian poem by Sufi poet, Attar of Nishapur – the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their sovereign, as they have none. The hoopoe, the wisest of them all, suggests that they should find the legendary Simorgh. The hoopoe leads the birds, each of whom represents a human fault which prevents humankind from attaining enlightenment. The hoopoe tells the birds that they have to cross seven valleys in order to reach the abode of Simorgh, the mythical bird.