THREE WORDS I gave her eulogy and spoke about her to everyone in the room except her. Twenty-two years on, I have written the words I never said. New Substack essay, live now: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/three-word... #PermissionIsTriumph

Boys aren't the problem. They're being targeted by an algorithm selling a counterfeit masculinity. Schools must offer a better story. Building Schools for Boys by Prof Phil Cummins & David Atkinson shows how. Get it right and the world inherits good men: www.amazon.com.au/Building-Sch...

Six of our recent graduates. One book. 70+ emerging designers from six Melbourne institutions. FOLIO launches Mon 19 Oct, 6–7pm at Readings Carlton. Free, registration required: mfw.melbourne.vic.gov.au/event/folio-... Part of Melbourne Fashion Week. #DifferentByDesign #MFW

In 2017 I spent fourteen days in Cambodia keeping a daily record of ten young men becoming better people. I called the book Living Hope, because that is what they were. New essay, Sixty-Eight Pages, live now: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/sixty-eigh... #permissionistriumph

A bamboo tree spends five years underground before it grows thirty metres in six months. A boy scores a goal in ninety. Both are flourishing. My new essay, Ninety-Minutes, live now: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/ninety-min... #permissionistriumph

HEXPO 2026 landed at LCI Melbourne today 🔥 140+ founders, innovators and big thinkers in the building. This is what industry-connected learning looks like. #DifferentByDesign #HEXPO2026

It took a role, a resignation, and a grief that arrived five months late before I understood why I had never let go of anything since. New essay, Late November, live now: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/late-novem... #permissionistriumph

CANCELLED THE APPOINTMENT Paid a colourist every six weeks for a decade to disagree with my own hair. New essay on what refusing to pay for it taught me about the economy of self-doubt: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/unfiltered... #PermissionIsTriumph

+ RED SUIT Someone called my suit vulgar thirty years ago. He wasn’t the last. Turns out tone policing was never actually about tone. New Substack essay, live now: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/red-suit?r... #permissionistriumph

Fell alone on the Camino de Santiago. Phone lit up mid-fall: a former student replying to a birthday message I’d forgotten sending. Nobody schedules that. The plan was never the point. Being ready when it hit was. Twenty-Two Kilometres, out now: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

SEVEN YEARS. My father never explained Italy to me. He just lived it, quietly, and left me to find it myself. New Substack essay on grief, inheritance, and finally being ready to go back: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph

Alfie Kohn’s 2024 essay on cognitive load theory names it exactly: CLT “offers no recognition of the learner as an autonomous agent.” I didn’t get there from research. I got there from a classroom, and thirty years of watching compliance become voice, agency, advocacy: www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/clt/

We’re hiring: Director of Studies Lead academic quality and shape how the next generation of designers & creatives learns. 📍 Collingwood, Melbourne | Full-time Details → www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/44... Apply by 9am Thu 27 Aug.

My talk is now live: “We are educating imagination out of existence.” Obedience builds replicas. Imagination builds worlds. We’re teaching kids to be more like machines — when what the moment demands is proof they’re not. Watch here: youtu.be/EpmeylRPAJc?... #permissionistriumph

CONTACT IS NOT CONNECTION A friend from my 20s. A former student now running my old school. A woman met once in Johannesburg who still writes weekly. None lasted on feeling. Each lasted because someone kept writing back. New essay: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #permissionistriumph

Named on The Educator’s Most Influential Educators 2026 list. Truth is, influence isn’t a solo act. It’s students who show up and do the work. Colleagues who believe creative education isn’t a nice-to-have. Full list: www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/best-in-...

Six things happen to a person inside an institution: teaching, training, coaching, therapy, socialisation, formation. Only one fails unless you walk away capable of forming someone else. New Substack essay, Formation, live now: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #permissionistriumph

Alexander Stubb answered a question about happiness on Adam Grant's podcast, unscripted. What he said, I'd already written, six years earlier. Horizon is about hearing your own thinking spoken back to you by a stranger. New essay live now: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #permissionistriumph

Honoured to be joining ReimaginED Melbourne 2026 this October — among a galaxy of educators reimagining what’s next. My workshop: BELONGING BUILDS SUCCESS — Designing for Voice, Agency & Advocacy. Register: events.humanitix.com/reimagined-m... #ReimaginED2026

So proud of LCIM alumni Leah Wilkinson & Valentina Barros 👏 Their capstone collection features in @harpersbazaarec’s editorial “The Shape of the Body.” From the studio to the pages of Harper’s Bazaar Ecuador — this is just the beginning. #DifferentByDesign

WE’RE HIRING LCI Melbourne is hiring two Admissions Advisors on a 9-month fixed-term basis — a student-facing role guiding aspiring creatives through their admissions journey. Apply TODAY: jobs.dayforcehcm.com/en-AU/lci/LC... #DifferentByDesign

REVOLUTION Five certainties withdrawn at once: truth, power, equity, climate, work. Forecasters count four. The fifth has entered perception itself, through a pair of glasses. What can no longer be inherited must be formed, or it will be sold. New Substack: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

Revolution

On the upheaval we have been living inside for a decade, and the one ground it cannot take

open.substack.com

+ The machine writes the essay, composes the music, drafts the building. On demand, for the price of a prompt. The one thing it cannot counterfeit is a life it was changed by. Creativity was never the dessert. It was always the infrastructure. open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

Can the Real Creative Please Stand Up? A sold-out room, one big question: what does creativity mean when AI can produce more than ever? Thanks Dave King — the busywork is gone, what’s left is the real work. Bold thinking. Gut instinct. Proud to host TEDx Melbourne at LCI Melbourne.

THRESHOLD The tools forming our young are owned, and ownership is never neutral. A harvest grown on enclosed ground is not flourishing. It is yield. Stand at the threshold. Ask whose land it is. New Substack essay: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph

Sitting with the news of Professor Richard Scolyer AO’s passing. He and Georgina Long took melanoma from a death sentence to largely curable — thousands are alive because of it. But it’s his boundless love of life and selflessness I’ll remember. Thank you, Richard. With gratitude. Vale. 💙

Back on Mathew Green's The Art of Teaching after 3+ years. We talked human-centred learning — education shouldn't just inform, it should transform — and the work at LCI Melbourne. 🎧 podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/e... #TheArtofTeaching

He knew it would take him. He fought anyway — not for himself, but for every family who’d face the Beast next. That was Neale Daniher. I had the honour of interviewing him in 2017. Today we lost him. But the army he built marches on. Vale, champ. 💙 #FightMND

A sentence carved into a wooden play structure. Four Marist sisters in gangland Guatemala City. Sixteen years of carrying what I saw there. Essay 21 of #PermissionIsTriumph is the moment I claim it: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

Some places do not lift. They shift. Borobudur did that to me. The Great Wall. Florence. The boat pulling from Cinque Terre. My new essay is about what beauty actually does to the person who receives it. 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph