Taller de Permiso is an activist and community led arts space and campaign which seeks to decode, re-imagine and make easier the permitting processes in the area for small informal business owners. To improve their community’s economic outcomes, three artists in Brownsville, TX have launched a series of workshops and a supporting media campaign

The Citizen University Youth Collaboratory empowers and connects a rising generation of civic leaders and doers. Students from around the country travel to cities around the nation, meeting leading civic innovators, sharpening their literacy in citizen power and producing their own independent projects in their communities for one year. Clara Nevins, from the very first cohort shares her story.

“One thing about it is you can never trust the coal company. … They call it Bloody Harlan for a reason. We don’t intend no harm. We’re just here trying to get what’s rightfully owed to us.” That’s what Shane Smith, a former Blackjewel and Revelation Energy miner, told alumni of our Appalachian Media Institute when they interviewed him last week on the train tracks in Harlan County where miners had gathered to protest.

When employees don’t feel they can bring their “whole selves” to work, creativity, productivity, and ultimately a business’s success can also suffer. In the third of a series of guest posts, Theo Edmonds explains how diversity, inclusion, innovation, and production interrelate, and how a new framework could help all sides measure and manage “cultural wellbeing” in the workplace.