Healing Journeys Through Art Workshop

October 4 & 5, 2013

Grand Coteau Heritage & Cultural Centre

Cost: $50 (includes breakfast & lunch on Saturday)

Keynote Address: Compassionate Arts as a Healing Technology

Two, ½ day workshops: The Soul and the Arts

The Body, Voice and the Arts

This workshop is funded by the Saskatchewan Arts Board Creative Partnerships Explorations — Explore & Connect

A rallying cry to all of us who are concerned about the direction of art, creativity, and healing, this is an important look at the personal, social, spiritual, and political implications of how we may practice active love for one another and foster well being. This presentation will examine the lived experience of people’s art making and creativity, and the resulting transformative processes and conclusions of co-creating individual and collective knowledge on the healing journey. Through a ten-year experience of working with the healing power of art and story in an anti-oppressive space containing creativity, compassion, and capacity building in community within a binary dominant system this presentation, rich with stories and examples of an enlightened model of arts-based care that works will:

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  Profile arts activism for social change in relation to spirituality as art, voice, identity, power, diversity, otherness, the community of the body and wholeness of the community, and personal and collective healing.
  
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  Challenge and look beyond secular science that is inadequate for our times at the pressing need to re-sacralize our experience of ourselves and our world through art and creativity. What ancient ways of knowing and healing do people live into as they move through compassionate arts in sacred spaces that become authoritative sites for human inquiry?
  
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  Examine alternative formats for psychosocial support that need to be considered in order to widen access, particularly formats that feel less like therapy, do not depend on verbal skills, and allow personalized expression and individualized meaning making. Implications exist for art-based psychosocial and spiritual support systems, if whole person health is a goal.
  
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  Ultimately, in honestly calling attention to the dominant cultural/health narrative that disempowers and files people away through lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge, we can identify tangible opportunities to build common ground through the arts to advance shared goals for healing the body, mind, and spirit and transform the way people are cared for on the healing journey.
  

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  Centering and letting go through guided relaxation.
  
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  Experiencing Pythagorean Tuning-centering through a musical scale found throughout nature.
  
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  Finding a deep peace and calm place within.
  

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  Journeying with the creative process to remake your mythology and narrative by giving of yourself through the act of art making.
  
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  Integrating body life experiences and expressing your spirit through the energy flow of art making, self-compassion, mindfulness and personal reflection.
  
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  Constructing and reconstructing your sense of self and understanding dimensions of existence expressed by an active body.
  
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  Empowering self through voicing the healing aspects of the spiritual dimension evoked by inherent inclusive language and new awareness for the body as a community, that is at the heart of creativity for healing.
  

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  This workshop explores how creativity promotes health and wellbeing, integrating your body’s life experiences and expressing your spirit’s energy flow through art making, self-compassion, mindfulness and personal reflection. Experience the relaxation response; the flow state; self-expression and self-actualization.
  
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  Experience expressing your spirit through your energy flow through a guided relaxation and image discovery as body-based research
  (Oil pastel/tempera paint, paper).
  
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  What happens to experience on the way to becoming memory? What happens to experiences on the way to becoming history? If memory were treated as an object of historical analysis, oral history could be a powerful tool for discovering, exploring, and evaluating the nature of the process of historical memory in how one makes sense of one’s past, in how one connects individual experience and its social context, how the past becomes part of the present, and how one uses it to interpret one’s life and the world.
  
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  Research through rather than just about ancient ways of knowing requiring engaging different forms of consciousness than are normally used in cognitive thought, and require a quieting of, and sometimes even disengaging, the cognitive mind. Thinking can actually interfere with creativity!
  
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  Enter an age of greater spirituality within arts and healing-based research efforts, as an inquiry into human flourishing, the place where the spiritual meets social inquiry.
  

“The Soul and the Arts ”

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  Slowing down through guided relaxation.
  
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  Experiencing Pythagorean Tuning-centering through a musical scale found throughout nature.
  
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  Finding a safe sanctuary space within.
  
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  Journeying with the creative process as a mirror for self-discovery.
  
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  Exploring images and symbols as ‘soul medicine’ through spontaneous India ink creations.
  
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  ‘Sighting’ a mandala in these creations of what is life affirming and personal ‘heart-mind medicine’ for you.
  
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  Tapping into the power of art in community. Working from your heart, connecting with the world your art creates, and discovering in some way your life will be changed.
  

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  This workshop offers a window to better understand making meaning through the compassionate arts to find purpose in life, to remember who we are, to read voice, agency and wholeness back into our story, how we are connected to communities, and the greater mystery of life.
  
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  Experience art meaning making and story telling for healing through a guided relaxation and image discovery as arts-based research (India ink, oil pastels, paper).
  

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  Express yourself, have fun, reduce stress, find the healing within, participate in your own wellbeing, find community…refresh your soul.
  
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  Connect with the power of the arts through practicing self-compassion, cultivating inner harmony by recognizing one’s common humanity, and mindfulness. Discover artistic expression as a spiritual wellness practice.
  

8:30 pm Rhythm & Movement workshop with Trea Jensen (including African drum circle)

8:00-9:00 am Breakfast

9:00-11:00 am Workshop #1 with Bonnie Chapman

11:30 am Writing workshop

12:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm Clay workshop with Stephen Girard & Shon Profit

3:00 pm Workshop #2 with Bonnie Chapman

5:00 pm Workshop ends

Registration with payment on a first-come basis. Registration deadline is Friday, September 27.

Name: ______________________________________________________________

Mailing Address :

Home Ph: ______________ ___ Work Ph: ______ _______ ___Cell Ph: ______________________

I authorize the Centre to take photographs or video of me while participating in a program and to use this media for promotional purposes including print or electronic publications, without compensation to me: Y N

Submit this form and payment to: GCHCC, Box 966, Shaunavon, SK S0N 2M0 or drop off at 440 Centre Street in Shaunavon.

Participants should dress in comfortable attire suitable for yoga and art projects.