Emergent Strategy Workshop
Join the free workshop on Wednesday, July 1st @ 10AM MDT
Event Sign Up Here
https://partiful.com/e/vyExCehv73LXlg9oVXSS?c=Eaj50k_6
I’m currently reading adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy for what might actually be the 20th time. I'm reading it right now as part of Neely Kimey’s Weird + Wired Book Club, and the discussions we've been having are incredibly meaningful and cathartic. One observation that keeps coming up in the group is how the cover and title completely undersell the actual magic contained inside.
This book has a highly specific history in my life. Several years ago, I lent my copy out to a friend. It was full of heavy annotations documenting my feelings and experiences. Time passed, I forgot who I lent it to, and I eventually moved on.
Sometime later, I went to a local float studio for the first time. I ended up stepping out of the tank early. I was surprised by how hard I found it to relax when the only task was to simply rest. I couldn’t bring myself to let my head back fully into the water; my body was incredibly tense and holding onto a lot of fear.
While waiting for my boyfriend to finish his float, I sat down in the lounge in a hanging chair—the exact same kind I have at home. I looked over at the bookshelf and spotted a copy of Emergent Strategy. I pulled it off the shelf and was shocked to realize it was my specific copy. There were my original annotations, now sitting alongside new notes, a bus ticket, and a handmade bookmark painted with watercolors.
Fast forward to 2025. I took on a new career opportunity working as an unpaid community manager for a marketing company that thought they were going to change the world (surprise, it turned out to be kinda cult-y). While deep in the sauce they were selling, I decided to introduce the concepts from Emergent Strategy to the community and facilitated a workshop on the text.
The turnout was small due to a total lack of marketing support—which is weird for a marketing company—but the actual workshop went well.
What happened next is what didn’t sit right with me. The company started quoting and utilizing adrienne maree brown’s work without any attribution, stripping the context to use the concepts as a literal marketing strategy. I felt deeply responsible for facilitating this white, capitalist bastardization of a text that means so much to me.
Despite that extraction, and despite the guilt I carried over how that company used the work, I am reclaiming my relationship with it. All that being said, this book has been a guiding force through change since I first read it in 2017. Reading it again in our current book club is a reminder of what the work actually does when it is held in a space of genuine connection.
Which brings me to the event Neely and I will be hosting on July 1st at 10 AM MDT. You don’t need to have read the book or have participated in the book club to join. We will be introducing adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy and working through some practical applications to apply the work to our daily lives.
Sign up here: https://partiful.com/e/vyExCehv73LXlg9oVXSS?c=Eaj50k_6
Hope to see you on the 1st! Sharing this book with others brings me so much joy.
Lots of love,
Britt
I can't attend in person, will there be a replay?