The Social Field

The Social Field is a podcast that showcases stories about what it means to be a social performance practitioner. Designed for people from a range of sectors (mining, oil and gas, renewable energy, forestry, agriculture, protected areas management and more) this will be appeal both to those directly involved in the discipline and to those accountable for teams doing stakeholder engagement, socio-e...

The Social Field is a podcast that showcases stories about what it means to be a social performance practitioner. Designed for people from a range of sectors (mining, oil and gas, renewable energy, forestry, agriculture, protected areas management and more) this will be appeal both to those directly involved in the discipline and to those accountable for teams doing stakeholder engagement, socio-e...

This episode introduces you to The Social Field season two,defending the value of spaces like this and presenting storytelling as the structuring device for the rest of the season. As part of this episode, we link the focus directly to the work of addressing our most intractable problems associal performance practitioners. We also introduce some of our storytelling gurus who help us understand the...

Mpinane Mmahlatji , a facilitator of complex multi-stakeholder processes shares her rich experience of how important it is to start our interventions by gaining a deeper appreciation of the system and challenge we are facing. She also suggests we reframe how we plan for transition and exits. Kalnisha Singh adds to this discussion with a reflection on how to understand the moment one finds oneself...

Karien Lotter , a social scientist with experience in the work of land access, displacement and resettlement, shares with us the learnings from her studies in regenerative systems around the importance of adopting different perspectives as we seek to understand and then intervene into the range of systems at play influencing communities. Bongani Baloyi shares his experiences of how cross-continent...

Queen B (or Bianca Jordan) is a socio-economicdevelopment manager in the renewable energy sector. She explores with us who is narrating our socio-economic development journey, considering the challenges ofco-creation as well as the empowerment journey required. In this episode, we also take a fuller view on the role played by a narrator in setting the frame for the work, including by setting the a...

Mariam January, a sustainability consultant and partowner of her family’s taxi business, shares with us some of the ways in which the different worlds she live in clash, highlighting the influence of “the rules of the game” in shaping how we move through different spaces. She alsochallenges us to be awake to the structural forces that influence how things play out – so we can both be more honest w...

We explore the skills, tips and tricks of how storytellingpractices can be used more effectively to enhance our work as social performance practitioners.  Contact: To learn more about the work Jess Schulschenk is involvedin, follow her on https://www.linkedin.com/in/jess-schulschenk-9627944 .You can also find out more about the Embedding Project at https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keyw...

Karien Lotter, Andy Booth and Rob Gerrits participate in this long form and standalone podcast episode where they discuss the launch of the The Landscape Lens: a five-part conversation series exploring how transformative projects can move beyond managing impact to managing change. This looks beyond mitigation to actively engaging with inevitable landscape-level social, economic, governance, cultur...

Due to popular response, we have decided to offer the full length interview between Alison McCallum and Nomfundo Mogapi as a SEASON ONE EXTRA. Those of you who have enjoyed episodes 2 and 3 which featured Nomfundo Mogapi (from the Centre for Mental Wellness and Leadership) will find this especially interesting. We also hope you will share this with your managers and human resources colleagues who...

In this inaugural episode, we introduce The Social Field podcast and unpack more on what a social performance practice entails. We learn more about the differing perspectives on the discipline and its functionality across sectors by hearing people’s origin stories for how they came to the work. Content: Check out Eva Pomeroy' s article quoted in the introduction at the following link: https://medi...

Chulumanco Mdingi , a community relations manager in the renewable energy sector, shares his extensive practical and theoretical knowledge of socio-economic development in the South African context. Chulumanco describes some of the poor practices he has been exposed to but also points to the structural challenges with operating in community contexts. Psychologist Nomfundo Mogapi shares her knowled...

If you want to maximise your impact in the work you do, psychologist Nomfundo Mogapi argues the most important thing you can do is invest in therapy. In this episode, we explore the importance of working on one’s own psychological wellbeing as a key requirement for operating successfully in the social performance field. Nomfundo Mogapi helps us understand the brain science behind why therapy and o...

A social performance manager supporting renewable energy projects in the mining sector, Sindiswa Gaven speaks to us of her experiences of what makes certain social performance teams effective. She shares how working in a cross-functional ways builds confidence and creates more meaning in the work we do. She goes further to call for companies to better involve employees living in neighbouring host...

This episode was inspired by a question asked by Olebogeng Koatlhai, a Social performance specialist supporting Major Capital Projects. She challenges our views on how mega projects and large organisations could be working together with civil society to progress the objective of a just transition. Alison McCallum also shares her views on the challenges of collaboration and the importance of operat...

The season concludes with a reflection on how the discipline has evolved in the past 20 years or so from when the term ‘social performance’ was first coined. It explores the levers that have supported this evolution and explores how different organisations and sectors may be at a different point on the social performance maturity journey. It begins to imagine the seeds of the future and what these...

Episode six (part two) continues to explore ideas about the future of the discipline by shifting focus to the global and local trends and themes that we observe at the very forefront or frontier of the practice. These include radically rethinking the role of external stakeholders (including community stakeholders) as partners in the journey, supported by new forms of participatory process and agre...