Registration for the conference is open now. Check out the symposium invite below:

What if the very act of gathering together could become a form of resistance against forces that seek to fragment us? What if our shared conversations could weave new possibilities for how we live, connect, and create meaning together?

We’re celebrating Ken Gergen’s extraordinary contributions to social construction while embracing the imperative of our time: learning how relational practices are restorative–can mend what’s been torn, build what’s been broken, and future-forming–imagine what’s never been. We’re exploring how the personal, public, and political interweave, how collective transformation connects to individual healing, and how local conversations can ripple into global change.

This Symposium emerges from three powerful currents converging at this current moment. First, there’s the dynamic transition happening within the Taos Institute—a reimagining rather than a refounding, where new voices join the conversation to expand what’s possible. As we celebrate Ken Gergen’s 90th year around the sun, social constructionism takes a relational turn, where lived experiences shape-shift our gaze from theoretical abstractions to everyday interactive moments, from analysis to socio-relational responsiveness, and from behavioral to relational being.

Second, we’ve all felt the tug between digital convenience and the embodied presence of togetherness. COVID taught us we could connect across distances, but it also revealed that we lose something when bodies don’t share space—those spontaneous conversations over coffee, the electric energy of ideas sparked in hallway encounters, the ineffable something that happens when people we cherish gather in the same room. We discovered we were hungry for this embodied togetherness, this being and speaking together that words can barely capture.

Third, we’re living through a time when the social fabric feels particularly fragile. Political upheaval, climate uncertainty, and the rapid emergence of AI are reshaping our world faster than we can fully comprehend. In the United States and beyond, we’re witnessing attempts to tear apart and reconstruct social values, often in ways that fragment rather than heal. No doubt a pulsating moment, of a much longer arch, poignantly reminding us of the socially constructed world we live in. A world where the political has become divorced from the relational, as if what we do together—the very essence of the political—could be separated from how we do it.

But here’s what excites us: social construction offers us rich, hopeful socio-relational resources for this moment. It reminds us that our personal lives, our public engagements, and our political realities are not separate domains but interconnected threads in the same social tapestry. It is a reminder that what we deem as macro and micro spheres are intricate entanglements of our social processes and performances. They are our embodied understandings of being human, constructed from within our everyday participation.  When we understand that all meaning emerges through the activity of relating, that our identities and institutions are continuously constructed through our interactions, stories, and processes, we realize our collective power matters and we can reshape what seems fixed or broken.

This Symposium is our invitation to practice what we value—to live the very socio-relational approaches we champion in our organizations, our therapeutic work, our educational spaces, and our community building. By gathering together—being together, in person—we’re not just talking about better social lives; we’re actively co-creating them. Every conversation becomes a small act of world-making. Every relationship becomes a laboratory for new possibilities. Every interdisciplinary encounter expands our understanding of what transformation and growth can look like.

Join us in this experiment in relationality. Come ready to be surprised by what emerges when caring, thoughtful people gather with intention, curiosity, and hope for better social lives.

Register to attend here: https://relationalplay.com/csw26/