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Artists in the Collection

We seek to change systems. We create the message through art.

The artists you'll see, engage, and connect with through this living and breathing Solarpunkification art journey. It starts in February 2025, and will unfold from San Francisco to Germany.

About the Artists

 

Jeff Emmett

Bobby Fishkin photo

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Bobby Fishkin co-created Solarpunkfication.art in collaboration with other systems change artists and CrowdDoing. 
 
Background on Bobby Fishkin as a solar punk artist, 
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7jj2KyqE1h/?img_index=1
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CrowdDoing’s  Methods and Portfolio
 
CrowdDoing addresses complex social, economic, and environmental challenges by fostering multidisciplinary collaboration among professionals and volunteers from many different industries.  What makes us different? CrowdDoing aims to support social innovations with transformative impact potential through global multi-disciplinary volunteering, micro-leadership and service learning.  It provides a platform for professionals and volunteers from diverse sectors to connect and work together on initiatives aimed at creating systemic change.  It uses service learning to support social innovation.  Through global, multidisciplinary collaboration, virtual volunteers adopt micro-leadership roles aligned with their personal aspirations (ikigai). This model enables them to contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goals and tackle complex problems. CrowdDoing recognizes that engaging with real-world problems is often the most effective way to learn.
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Bobby Fishkin co-leads CrowdDoing, a systems change venture lab powered by virtual volunteers, entrepreneurs-in-residence, and an ecosystem of systems-change partners. CrowdDoing is a joint initiative of Reframe It Inc. and Match4Action Foundation.
 
Bobby co-founded Reframe It after receiving his B.A. in 2008 from Yale (magna cum laude), where he majored in Philosophy and was awarded the Bergen Cup for Outstanding Character, Wit, and Scholarship in the Humanities.  In 2018 Reframe It became a strategic partner of M4A Foundation to steward CrowdDoing together.    We believe that service learning, when applied to complex social challenges, can provide unparalleled educational experiences.  As we harness the potential of thousands of professionals across various fields, we aim to demonstrate that integrating altruistic service into their skill development not only enhances their professional growth but also contributes to solving pressing societal issues. This approach allows learners to grapple with real-world complexities, fostering deeper understanding and more lasting impact than traditional learning methods.
By connecting self-directed learners with opportunities to develop social innovations, we're creating a win-win scenario. Professionals can advance their skills while simultaneously contributing to meaningful change, and people most impacted by gaps in collective knowledge can help address these gaps via participatory approaches such as citizen science.   
The lab’s portfolio of initiatives focuses on issues including the environment, the promotion of physical and mental health, and the alleviation of poverty and homelessness. Its goals include Catastrophic Forest Fire Prevention; Flourish.science/Medicinal Foods & Herbs for Stress and Anxiety; Nature Counter to leverage time immersed in nature to increase compassion, empathy, creativity, and innumerable other benefits; and Zero Subsidy Affordable Housing to prevent homelessness.
  • Catastrophic Forest Fire Prevention
  • Flourish.science: Exploring medicinal foods and herbs for stress and anxiety
  • Nature Counter: Leveraging nature immersion for wellbeing
  • Zero Subsidy Affordable Housing to prevent homelessness
As co-leader of CrowdDoing, Bobby Fishkin draws on a rich background of social innovation and systems change that spans his entire career.
 
Our Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention Initiative is a prime example of how we're tackling global challenges head-on. CrowdDoing’s Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention Initiative has collaborated with the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction ARISE Network to develop the Community Wildfire Resilience Scorecard,  which is now published on PreventionWeb. ARISE also featured our  Wildfire Prevention Derivatives at the UN ARISE network’s conference on Insurance Innovations for Disaster Risk Reduction.[i]  Bobby Fishkin has also presented Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention by CrowdDoing to audiences at the Skoll World Forum and the Society of Adaptation Professionals.  . Fishkin  also hosted the  Skoll World Forum hackathon on The Future of Debt for Nature.  CrowdDoing is not just talking about change - we're actively creating tools and strategies to make it happen.
 
While wildfire prevention is a major focus, it's just one piece of the puzzle. CrowdDoing is involved in a whole range of environmental and health-related projects. We're working on everything from Nature Counter, which aims to quantify the benefits of spending time in nature and scale the adoption of nature immersion, to Flourish.science, which explores how medicinal foods and herbs can help with stress and anxiety. It's all about finding effective innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to complex problems.  (Links to some of this work appear below).[ii] 
 
In a conversation with Open Innovation Brazil, Bobby   explored the challenges facing social innovation and proposed potential solutions, a presentation which offers insight into the philosophy behind CrowdDoing.  He articulated what he calls the "Leibniz problem" in social entrepreneurship - the impossibility of any individual mastering all disciplines relevant to complex social issues. This limitation, Bobby argues, often leaves social entrepreneurs isolated and unable to fully leverage the interdisciplinary knowledge required for transformative impact. Bobby suggests that radical collaboration, as implemented through CrowdDoing's micro-leadership model, could address this challenge. By connecting diverse expertise across multiple fields, this approach aims to create the interdisciplinary collaboration necessary for social innovations to reach their full potential. Bobby posits that such a model could help overcome knowledge asymmetries and enable more comprehensive approaches to systemic change.[iii]   
A Longstanding Passion for Social Innovation
Bobby's passion for social innovation began in high school when he co-founded Books for Teachers. This program, now more than 25 years into implementation, has created thousands of classroom libraries across over a dozen states, demonstrating the long-term impact of Bobby’s early initiatives.[iv]
Later, as a Fellow of the Richard Florida Creativity Group and of the Office of the Mayor of Baltimore, he co-founded ACCESS (Arts Creating Community Energy and Social Solutions) in Baltimore, which worked with theatres and concert venues to use unsold seats to support building of relationships between at-risk youth and their mentors. He has served on the board of directors of the Social Enterprise Alliance Bay Area and is a systems change mentor at the Design Science Studio.
 
Engagement with the Arts and Solarpunk Visions of Possible Futures
 
Bobby's multifaceted career extends into the arts, as both a playwright and as a visual artist.  His plays have been produced in London and New York.[v] More recently, he has worked in the visual arts  using AI tools to create works with a regenerative, future-oriented focus.  His recent    "Tree of Life / Human Faces Series," exemplifies this approach. Using AI tools, Bobby creates intricate images where human faces emerge from and blend with natural elements like leaves, mushrooms, and other organic forms. This series visually represents the solarpunk ethos of harmony between humanity and nature, pushing the boundaries of how we perceive our relationship with the environment.
 
In a May 2024 interview with alien.papers titled "Artists and AI: A conversation with Bobby Fishkin," he elaborates on his creative process. Fishkin describes how he collaborates with AI to manifest visions of a sustainable, equitable future that are deeply resonant with solarpunk ideals. He views this AI-assisted art as a means to bridge the gap between current realities and aspirational futures, using aesthetic appeal to emotionally connect viewers with solarpunk concepts.   An online Udemy course that Fishkin teaches— “Backcasting from a Solar Punk Future via Generative Artificial Intelligence”—bridges his artistic practice with his interest in sustainable development.  Bobby has also explored the idea of approaching life itself as a form of creative expression.[vi]
In July 2023, Bobby co-presented a toolkit for successful Positive Deviance / Solarpunk protocols at TransformationsConference23.[vii] This work, developed in collaboration with Saskia Verraes and Mark Smith, represents our ongoing efforts to create practical tools for systemic change. The presentation showcased how we can leverage positive outliers and solarpunk ideals to drive transformative innovation. Earlier work melding the arts and social innovation include the   "Visionaries & Revolutionaries Day" that Bobby organized in 2014 at the Dissident Futures exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco. This event brought together diverse thinkers to reimagine social challenges through creative activities. A notable feature was Bobby’s workshop where participants cut up and reassembled maps to create collages representing idealized geographies, literally reshaping the world to reflect their visions for change. The day also included scenario planning, climate change discussions, and collaborative art projects. By encouraging attendees to physically reconstruct geographical boundaries, Bobby’s approach embodied the event's spirit of radical reimagining, blending artistic expression with social innovation to explore new possibilities for our shared future.[viii] Bobby has also hosted Visionaries & Revolutionaries at the Embassy Network.[ix]
Over the years,  Bobby has come to see these gatherings as a crucial part of driving systems change. One particularly memorable event was a convergence he hosted with leaders from Enviu, a Dutch systems change venture lab.  These gatherings embody what he ses  as a 'solarpunk-inspired mission': nurturing the collective wisdom and creativity needed to drive systemic change. It's not just about hosting conversations - it's about cultivating a global network of social innovators who are ready and eager to reimagine and reshape our world.
Work in Deliberative Democracy
In addition, Bobby has a longstanding interest in deliberative democracy.  He  has presented results from his work on deliberative democracy internationally, including at the Global Citizen Foundation in Geneva, at the European Association of Wind Energy Producers, the Institute For The Future, at Tedx Hayward and the 4th Annual Summit on Public Consultation and Engagement in Toronto.[x]  In 2014, Bobby co-authored an influential policy paper titled "Citizen Voice in a Globalized World" for the Center for Global Development.[xi] This paper, written in collaboration with Lawrence MacDonald and David Witzel, explored innovative methods for uncovering and amplifying informed global public opinion to improve decision-making on international issues. It  examined various approaches to ascertaining citizen preferences, with a particular focus on deliberative polling - a methodology that Bobby has been instrumental in developing and promoting. This work underscores his commitment to enhancing democratic processes and citizen engagement on a global scale, bridging his interests in technology, policy, and civic participation. In addition, Bobby was part of the team which advised and provided training for the Center For Global Development’s deliberative democracy initiative in Tanzania in 2015.   He later co-authored a report for the Provida Foundation on the potential of social enterprise and impact volunteerism. This work explored how we can harness the power of both business models and volunteer energy to create sustainable social change.
 
In 2011, with his father James Fishkin, Bobby won the prestigious McKinsey/Harvard Business Review Management 2.0 Challenge for their "Deliberative Corporation" concept.[xii] This innovative approach combines deliberative polling methodology with online collaboration tools to enhance decision-making processes in organizations. The Deliberative Corporation model allows companies to consult their stakeholders in a structured, informed manner, leading to more representative and sustainable decisions. This win underscores Bobby’s commitment to developing novel solutions that bridge democratic principles with corporate governance, further establishing his reputation as an innovator in the field of collective decision-making.
 
Fostering  Impact Investing
 
Bobby has also been engaged for some time in efforts to encourage impact investing. In 2015, he  co-presented on impact investment work he has done at SOCAP, a conference that a melting pot for innovators in the world of impact investing and social entrepreneurship. One of the projects in which he has been  involved was a Social Impact Bond feasibility study for Marin County and the Marin Community Foundation. He worked in collaboration with Marin General Hospital, Total Impact Advisors, and Heritas. Social Impact Bonds are an innovative financing tool that brings together government, service providers, and investors to tackle social challenges, so this study was a deep dive into how the model might be applied   in Marin.
 
Through CrowdDoing’s Relational Capital initiative (which Bobby co-leads), Bobby has partnered with Tomas Carruthers on developing social impact stock exchanges. 
 
Interest in the Roles Technology Can Play
In 2014, Bobby led a project examining tech industry perspectives on immigration reform. Working with TechCrunch, the Knight Foundation, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Bobby used Reframe It's platform to combine online engagement with deliberative polling methods. The initiative involved tech community members reviewing policy materials, participating in moderated discussions, and engaging with experts. This approach revealed how informed dialogue could shift opinions on complex issues, suggesting new possibilities for public consultation in the digital age. The project explored intersections between technology, policy-making, and civic engagement, demonstrating a method for applying collective intelligence to contentious social issues.[xiii]
Bobby’s longstanding interest in how crowdsourcing and technology can address pressing problems led him to co-lead the Haiti.com initiative to get thousands of volunteers to help first responders after the Haiti earthquake by finding actionable intelligence from social media reports and inputting them into an Ushahidi map for first responders.[xiv] It was a powerful example of how technology and collective action could be used in crisis response.
 
Media Recognition
 
Bobby’s insights on innovation have been recognized in major publications, including The New York Times.[xv]  Bobby’s insights on innovation have been recognized in major publications, including The New York Times.[xvi]  He has also appeared on a number of video blogs and podcasts. These  include the Spaceship Earth Mission Log in 2023 video blog and podcast (“Bobby Fishkin: Collaborate with artificial intelligence to reach a solar punk future faster”). Bobby  was featured as a guest on "The Other Others," a podcast hosted by renowned Aboriginal scholar and author Tyson Yunkaporta. The episode explored Fishkin's ideas on social innovation, systemic change, and the concept of "solar punk" futures. During the discussion, Bobby articulated his vision of leveraging interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex social challenges, touching on themes of neurodiversity, radical collaboration, and reimagining possible futures. This conversation with Yunkaporta, known for his work on Indigenous knowledge systems and nonlinear thinking, provided a unique platform for Bobby to contextualize his ideas within a broader discourse on alternative ways of approaching global challenges. The episode reflects Fishkin's engagement with diverse perspectives in the field of social innovation and his efforts to bridge different modes of thinking about systemic change.[xvii]
 
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Other Activities
 
He has been awarded three technology patents from the United States Patent Office. Before transferring to Yale, Bobby attended Oberlin and University College London. Information about (and links to) some of Bobby’s other initiatives, ventures,  and publications appear  below.[xviii]​​​
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You can see CrowdDoing's volunteer roles at https://www.volunteermatch.org/search/org1130924.jsp.
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[iv] A documentary was created on the "Books For Teachers"​ program I designed (a program which has created thousands of classroom libraries in several states)
http://books-for-teachers.org/video1.html
 
A winner of the Texas Young Playwrights Festival, he had a different play   produced in Texas and New York City. ​
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[viii]  Recently, I had the opportunity to join an inspired group convened by visionary Bobby Fishkin to plan  Visionaries & Revolutionaries Day on the closing weekend of the Dissident Futures Exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  “We generated 100++ ideas in a brainstorm. Refined these into an action packed schedule including scenario planning, climate change meme healing, mapping collages, vision boards, building utopias, a revolution booth, a hold up, performances and more! “ https://www.ideasthatimpact.org/ideas-that-impact/visionaries-revolutionaries-at-the-dissident-futures-exhibit-at-ybca
 
[ix] The Embassy Network hosted Visionaries and Revolutionaries with Bobby Fishkin.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1448399618723020/
 
[x] Bobby Fishkin spoke at TedxHayward which was themed Peace Innovation and gave my thoughts on the potential for a deliberative society  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_EDkS5T_oU
  TEDxHayward talk- 'Peace Innovation"​
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[xi] https://www.cgdev.org/publication/citizen-voice-globalized-world
 
 
[xii]  http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/deliberative-corporation
 
 
[xiii]   https://knightfoundation.org/articles/reframe-it-project-seeks-input-tech-community-immigration-policy/, https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/refram-it-techcrunch-will-use-knight-grant-to-develop-deliberative-polling-for-tech-policy/, https://venturebeat.com/business/wed-like-your-opinions-on-immigration-reform/
 
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[xvi] In a 2008 New York Times article on collective innovation, Fishkin was quoted emphasizing the importance of diverse collaboration: "The best innovations occur when you have networks of people with diverse backgrounds gathering around a problem," said Robert Fishkin, then president and chief executive of Reframeit Inc. He added, "We need to get better at collaborating in noncompetitive ways across company and organizational lines." This perspective aligns closely with his later work in developing platforms for collective problem-solving and innovation, such as CrowdDoing. This same quote was later included in two books:
"Innovate Your Innovation Process: 100 Proven Tools" by Shlomo Maital, published in 2016. Page 77.[xvi]
"It Takes Two to Do Science: The Puzzling Interactions Between Science and Society" edited by Henri Eisendrath and Jean Paul Van Bendegem. Page 7
https://whispersandshouts.typepad.com/files/collective-innovation-and-the-problem-with-brainstorming.pdf “ https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/business/07unbox.html.
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Intra personal cartography
 
https://venturebeat.com/business/reframe-it-lets-you-take-notes-in-the-margin-of-the-web/
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/reframe-it-launches-community-markup-system-for-web-pages/
https://www.intrapersonalcartography.com/
 
Bobby Fishkin gave a talk in 2009 to Terry Winograd's Human Computer Interaction course at Stanford
http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/speaker.php?date=2009-01-3
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[1] CrowdDoing is developing a new approach to reduce wildfire risk and prevent damage, while simultaneously regenerating nature and improving quality of life. This approach combines new analytic methods, data, financial tools, and collaboration. Our “prevention derivatives” thesis is that anchor stakeholders at risk could demonstrably identify their self-interest in preventing the air pollution and other damage caused by wildfires. Stakeholders share liabilities. Catastrophes cause harm to insurers, reinsurers, Insurance-linked-security holders, corporations, individuals, and whole regions. If we can prevent these risks cost effectively through social innovation, that is a collective opportunity. For example, preventing wildfires can  reduce risk for multiple types of stakeholders if combinations of social innovations are financed and adopted. Meanwhile, the bias against valuing positive risk prevents social innovations from getting adopted even if there would be remarkable benefits to all stakeholders through their adoption.
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More specifically, the topic I presented on was regarding how the insurance sector can in the future embrace the impact potential prevention derivatives, upstream parametrics and social innovation portfolios to reduce air basin, water basin and fire basin risk for stakeholders. on Wednesday on behalf of CrowdDoing. This was as part of a larger symposium organized by ARISE (https://lnkd.in/d_5HYJd), 
 
. Bobby Fishkin
was on the Spaceship Earth Mission Log in 2023 video blog and podcast:
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You can see CrowdDoing's volunteer roles at https://www.volunteermatch.org/search/org1130924.jsp.
 
  TEDxHayward talk- 'Peace Innovation"​
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_EDkS5T_oU&feature=youtube_gdata_player%20
 
[1] A documentary was created on the "Books For Teachers"​ program I designed (a program which has created thousands of classroom libraries in several states)
http://books-for-teachers.org/video1.html
 
[1]   One of his plays was presented at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, and was also presented in workshops at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) and at the Theatre Museum. A documentary about it is available at here. 
 
A winner of the Texas Young Playwrights Festival, he had a different play   produced in Texas and New York City. 
[1] Back in 2012, BOBBY wrote a piece called 'The Story of your Life as a Work of Art' for the blog Emergent by Design. In it, he explored the idea that    by viewing our lives as works of art, we can craft narratives that are not only personally fulfilling but also contribute to positive global change.
[1] Toolkit for successful Positive Deviance / Solarpunk protocols in development Hosts: Bobby Fishkin, Saskia Verraes, Mark Smith Presented at TransformationsConference23, July 13th, 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ixLqQnIxI
[1] https://www.ideasthatimpact.org/ideas-that-impact/visionaries-revolutionaries-at-the-dissident-futures-exhibit-at-ybca Recently, I had the opportunity to join an inspired group convened by visionary Bobby Fishkin to plan 
Visionaries & Revolutionaries Day (Saturday, Jan 25) on the closing weekend of the Dissident Futures Exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  
“We generated 100++ ideas in a brainstorm. Refined these into an action packed schedule including scenario planning, climate change meme healing, mapping collages, vision boards, building utopias, a revolution booth, a hold up, performances and more! “
 
[1] The Embassy hosted Visionaries and Revolutionaries with Bobby Fishkin.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1448399618723020/
 
[1] Bobby Fishkin spoke at TedxHayward which was themed Peace Innovation and gave my thoughts on the potential for a deliberative society  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_EDkS5T_oU
[1] https://www.cgdev.org/publication/citizen-voice-globalized-world
[1]  http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/deliberative-corporation
[1]   https://knightfoundation.org/articles/reframe-it-project-seeks-input-tech-community-immigration-policy/, https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/refram-it-techcrunch-will-use-knight-grant-to-develop-deliberative-polling-for-tech-policy/, https://venturebeat.com/business/wed-like-your-opinions-on-immigration-reform/
[1] .   Georgetown University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  2010. 1483752.
 "Help us map what's happening in Haiti, It's used by NGO's & others to do their job." Updates to the minute from Twitter and other Social networking websites. Haiti.com. Aza Raskin, Bobby Fishkin and Joshua Rosen. 10 Sept. 2010. https://www.proquest.com/openview/489350a90111b24bfa2aa8d1a5a3a1d4/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750​
[1] I gave a talk in 2009 to Terry Winograd's Human Computer Interaction course at Stanford
http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/speaker.php?date=2009-01-30
 
Intrapersonal cartography
https://www.intrapersonalcartography.com/
 
Bobby Fishkin gave a talk in 2009 to Terry Winograd's Human Computer Interaction course at Stanford
http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/speaker.php?date=2009-01-30
​
Reframe It's Software was covered in multiple publications:
https://venturebeat.com/business/reframe-it-lets-you-take-notes-in-the-margin-of-the-web/
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/reframe-it-launches-community-markup-system-for-web-pages/
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Bobby Fishkin recorded with Rashaud Hannah on "Intra personal cartography"
https://www.intrapersonalcartography.com/, https://soundcloud.com/bobby-fishkin
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