What if we recognized our differences as an opportunity
to build coalition?
Guiding Principles
Social Justice
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Equity and reciprocity across our social and personal differences.
Aesthetics +
Creative agency to question, shape and rename.
Transformation
Social and personal reflection within and between people.
Guiding Methodology
Personal Axis
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Skills for generative engagement within people.
Interpersonal Axis +
Skills for generative engagement between people.
Social Systemic Axis
Skills for generative engagement
to transform cultural systems.
Identity
Identity is necessary to both distinguish between and connect individuals. Our identities may bring belonging or exclusion. Identity can be intentionally chosen or manipulated by cultural forces outside our control. Identity can uplift or silence us.
Difference
We are humanly the same yet different. We may share similar beliefs, yet our unique personal and cultural conditions create inequity between us, bias and habit within each of us. There are infinite ways our differences may lead to mistrust and conflict.
Conflict
To many people conflict is to be avoided, yet conflict persists through our avoidance. Conflict is a reactive behavior, a denial of feeling, seeing, hearing, speaking. Conflict is our inability to engage with the hurt around our identity. We learn to mistrust others.
Opportunity
When we lose trust, we default to protecting our identity, obscuring who we can be to one another. There is incredible potential for collective action, social justice and creative synergy when we repair trust and reach across differences.
Meet PeoplesLab Founder, Dorit Cypis
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With an emphasis on education, Dorit has taught and developed curriculum on identity and social relations at colleges and universities internationally. She has presented her identity skills training and conflict engagement programs to civic, cultural and educational groups worldwide, helping people bridge across difference and build capacity for generative relations. Dorit received a Master’s of Fine Arts from the California Institute for the Arts and a Master’s of Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University.
Over many years Dorit has developed a strategic focus on transformative change, studying and practicing modalities including: Body Arts Network, Kinetic Awareness, Body Mind Centering, Continuum, Vocalization, Vipassana/Insight Meditiation, Chi Qong, Hatha and Iyengar Yoga. These practices, critical in ensuring that change takes place within people and between people, have deeply informed Dorit’s unique integration of somatic skills throughout PeoplesLab’s approach.
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Dorit has been a key facilitator of public initiatives and a founder of community organizations, including:
Days of Dialogue/The Future of Policing (Dialogue Facilitator): Providing strategic facilitated dialogue between community members and law enforcement officers across Los Angeles County
North East Youth Council (Founder): Building civic leadership skills for vulnerable urban youth to inspire enhancement of their communities while improving relations with local police
Mediators Beyond Borders International (Co-Founder): Building local capacities for peace, advocating for mediation and providing consultancy for conflict resolution
Kulture Klub Collaborative (Founder): Guiding artists to collaborate with unhoused youth and social service providers to inspire creative citizenship while managing daily survival
Foundation for Art Resources (Co-Founder): Enabling partnerships between artists and private and public providers to produce cultural events in public spaces across Los Angeles
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Developed over several decades, Dorit’s vast art portfolio includes performance, photography and immersive installations, with exhibits including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Walker Art Center, Orange County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as in various galleries and community centers. She has been honored with many accolades including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rauschenberg Foundation Residency. Review Dorit’s artist portfolio.
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An active writer, Dorit’s essays have appeared in several journals and books on art and on mediation, including A Picture Is Not Forever, History Lesson, The Space of Conflict, Handbook of Mediation (Routledge, 2012), Performing Empathy, A Brave New World (remix), The Middle East Without a Middle, The Spirit of Proximity, Conflict, Mourning and Aesthetics. Review Dorit’s publications.
Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Montreal, Dorit currently lives in Los Angeles.
Founder and Director of PeoplesLab, Dorit Cypis has spent her professional life between the studio and the street as an artist, educator, mediator and social activator, asking a guiding question, “Who are we to one another?”
Across these practices, Dorit has explored themes of history, identity, and social relations, deeply informed by an artist’s life of critical reflection, questioning, shaping, listening and discerning.
PeoplesLab weaves direct experience and skillsets from her diverse practices to offer consulting, teaching, mediation and dialogue facilitation.
We invite leaders across civic, cultural, educational and business communities to work with us creatively in building transformative social change.
Build Your Capacity for Transformative Social Change
Expand attention, awareness and sensitivity
Deepen reflection on past experience
Learn dynamic listening skills
Explore habit and bias
Build critical thinking
Respond thoughtfully rather than impulsively
Recognize equity and reciprocity
Communicate clearly and with transparency
Empathize with the experience of others
Bridge relations with others