Sourced Design Lab Participant Story – Cultivate Personhood by Malinda Britt

By Malinda Britt

What Sourced Design principle will you be working with in the Education Design Lab for your capstone project and why did you choose that principle?

I will be working with the principle Cultivate Personhood. I chose this principle because I am eager to explore and practice the reclaiming of relationship with our bodies within education, especially sexuality education or “sex ed”. As a sexuality educator I find myself talking with young people all the time about keeping their bodies healthy and safe, the importance of communicating emotional and bodily boundaries in relationships, or even discussing the ways in which trauma can manifest in the body…and yet where is the praxis that prepares young people for real life? I am immersing myself in the Education Design Lab to question and learn how to best support young people foster a deep connection and trust in their embodied experiences in the world.

When considering this principle, what is one way you practice this in your own life and one way you see it practiced in the world around you (family, community, school, church, etc.)?

Cultivate Personhood – To me this is about coming back to wholeness as a human whose worth and value isn’t derived from the capacity to work, to produce, to monetize…which is so often the narrative told to us by capitalism. I practice cultivating personhood when I dance for the sheer experience of being in my body and expressing myself. I also see it practiced during Covid times when my family gathers once a week to slow down and spend time together around a fire-pit outside.