ABOUT ME

I create ‘instruments of consciousness’ for connective intelligence + moral imagination

I am a eco-social artist - moral imagination enabler, thought-worker, transformative dialogue practitioner, connective process designer, mentor, teacher, author, speaker, conversation partner and inspirer - sharing creative strategies for paradigm shift in practice.


I am committed to social sculpture and connective practice as an art of transformation that sees crises as opportunities for consciousness… opportunities to shape inner attitudes and outer forms based on interconnectedness and respect for all life forms.

I create and enable connective practices for becoming agents of personal, social and systemic change… practices that activate moral imagination, inspire social justice and decolonise the mind.

I am dedicated to enabling ‘warmth work’ and ‘the thought of the heart’… to mobilise capacities to resist unnecessary suffering, rethink ‘progress’, overcome the extractivist mindset, and inspire non-exploitative narratives for a living future.

I see the world as a landing place for souls: a workplace to overcome destructive egoism, develop our capacities for love and kindness and a conscious awareness of interconnectedness, and to learn to work together to make ‘social honey’.

CONNECTIVE IMAGINATION FOR A VIABLE FUTURE

Seeing the potential in situations and in the human being is integral to my practice. It also inspires my lifelong exploration of connective imagination as a means of living into, making sense of, and inhabiting this awesome world… without destroying each other and all life forms!

After years of working in diverse contexts, developing ways to gain insight into and engage creatively with challenges, I am convinced that connective imagination is essential to strengthening human connective intelligence, developing imaginal rooted thinking, and enabling a lived understanding of interconnectedness.

Connective imagination also helps us see that freedom and responsibility need to be understood as inseparable in the evolving human being. We are freedom beings who do not simply unfold according to plan. And so our freedom is not only a gift but a great challenge and danger.

Nourished by many human and more-than-human teachers, by guiding images and by intense exchanges about ‘art’ and social transformation - that began in the South African liberation struggle - I have come to an expanded understanding of the aesthetic as all that enlivens us, and to ‘responsibility’ as an ability-to respond.

Shelley Sacks, 2016. © Paradigm Shi[f]t, from ‘toilet roll’ multiple for connective practice deliberations.

Crises as opportunities for consciousness!

My journey has led through many portals to an energetic field, where the glories of the world, challenged by contradictions and profound crises, mobilise future imaginations.

From this energetic field I invite others to explore connective imagination, to work with crises as opportunities for new consciousness, and to experience the Connective Practice Approach® - which includes forms of thinking-together and ‘making social honey’ based on listening to oneself, the other, and the world: to experience instances of paradigm shift in practice!

Connective practice around the world!

Thousands of people from different countries, contexts, age groups and disciplines have been involved in this transformative work: experiencing and scaling out connective practices for ‘coming to our senses’, working with mind-sets, and engaging in generative ‘thinking-together’ for making ‘social honey’.

It includes young change makers in India, Europe, Africa, and China, and producers, consumers, decision makers, and solidarity movements in the global economy.

It involves teachers, ecologists, farmers, consultants, therapists, museums, decision-makers, curators, non-profits, researchers, educators, philosophers, pupils, students, activists, communities and other-than-human beings like trees, bananas, milk, water, and deer.

It takes place in large gatherings and small groups, in institutions and on the streets, online and live, in short workshops and over extended periods, in schools and local assemblies, in museums and universities, with teams and organisations.

ethical - moral - connective

  • “Shelley’s social sculpture projects bring about connections of self & world: a kind of choreography in which certain behaviours are made possible, or necessary, for all who connect with them. This sense of connection is the first step in taking hold of the world & changing it. Her work opens up space for us & inside us to re-enter & respond to the visible & invisible dimensions of our lives.”

    Karen Press: writer, editor & translator, has published ten poetry collections, a film script, short stories & educational materials in science, English, maths & economics. She lives in Cape Town.

  • " Your experiments will go down in the strivings of FREE movements in the world!"

    Joseph Beuys, in a letter to Shelley Sacks [1976]. Published in ‘Beuys in Hessen’ [2023].

  • "As Visiting Researcher in Shelley’s Social Sculpture Research Unit in Oxford, I worked closely with this incredibly inspiring person, bursting with ideas and passion for a better world, who has carried the torch of Social Sculpture into the 21st century and saved it for the present.”

    Prof. Dr. Martin Poltrum, Professor of Psychotherapy Science, Sigmund Freud University Vienna, researches at interface of philosophy, psychotherapy, ethics, aesthetics, and medical humanities.

  • "Shelley Sacks' commitment & direct personal involvement in the socio-political sphere are well known. [...] But she is first & foremost a creative artist of great integrity [...] in the vanguard of [...] a revolution in South Africans' conception of art. Some of her works are literally household articles in the homes of thousands of workers and students."

    Dr. Neville Alexander, Political activist and educationalist. Cape Town, 1990

  • Working with Shelley has been an honour & deeply transformational journey. Her deep, relational practices & poetic sensibility of 'working with questions' have changed how I teach & research. It facilitates spaces that are truly alive, breaking familiar categories & what we think we know. The profoundly generative power of her Connective Practice Approach is present in every word & gesture as new processes & language cultures emerge through her initiatives. I feel lucky to witness her vibrant, curious, life-enhancing energy do its magic across borders and boundaries.

    Dr Erzsébet Strausz, Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations, Central European University, Vienna

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