Dr Leanne Dodd, Pam Blamey, Nicki Cassimatis – Multi-genre writing and storytelling for transformation
Storytelling has had an important role to play throughout history for validating human experience, whether through joy or suffering, or the literal, lyrical or metaphorical. Just as trauma, suffering and workplace burnout may interrupt the natural flow of people’s life stories – their narratives – by ‘muting their voices’, the ‘reverse’ process, creative writing and storytelling, encourage and empower voices to be expressed (Bolton: 1999), allowing stories to be re-imagined and re-authored for better futures (White and Epston: 1990).
Professionals around the globe are increasingly collaborating, using writing and storytelling as tools for preventative and restorative well-being and transformation.
This session highlights how our collaborative group uses the written and spoken word as a powerful lens of transformation. You will have the opportunity to sample activities and hear evidence about storytelling for healing, connection and recovery, specifically through the genres of creative life writing, fairy tales, poetry and digital storytelling.
This workshop is an opportunity for participants at all levels of expertise to experience the potential of writing for well-being and sample how evidence-based storytelling activities can aid in recovery and burnout prevention. Participants will leave with an understanding of how our workshops can be tailored for clients and clinicians.
About your Workshop Leaders:
We are a collaborative group of arts/health storytelling and writing practitioners who will facilitate sample reflective practice and arts activities, and provide evidence, to demonstrate how various forms of storytelling, writing, arts and literature can play an important role in improving well-being and reducing hospital stays and doctors’ visits for professionals and consumers.
Dr Leanne Dodd (PhD Arts/Humanities) is a lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies at Central Queensland University and a published fiction author. Her PhD research involved a therapeutic form of writing fiction. She has published academically on, and presents workshops using her innovative practice of creative life writing framed by narrative therapy.
Pam Blamey (M Mental Health) is a creative arts therapist with 28 years in the counselling field and a Professional member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA). Pam specialises in using fairy tales, mythology and oral storytelling to examine personal and social issues, and to foster meaning-making, problem-solving and wellbeing.
Nicki Cassimatis (GC Mental Health) is a language and pastoral care teacher, workshop facilitator and published poet. She has presented at national and international conferences and events, including TEDxUQ. She is a passionate advocate for poetry as a tool for self-care in diverse clinical, community and educational contexts.
Jesse Williamson – Being intimate with a story
Traditional storytellers were advisors, historians, councillors and teachers; The Wise Ones who had spent their lives absorbing the accumulated wisdom of their tradition’s stories and honing their ability to pass this wisdom on. How can we do the same today? How can we take a “bad” event and restore/re-story it into a healing, learning experience that leaves us feeling safe and in control of our lives?
The quality of storytelling work is closely connected to how much wisdom it contains. Wisdom is said to be gained from experience but working with stories can give us an experience of something without needing to actually live through it ourselves. Working with stories can also give us the ability to see our own lives as a story and this gives us perspective and resilience when faced with experiences we would have rather not experienced.
This workshop presents simple imagination, acting and improvisation exercises in the context of how they can assist us to develop a three dimensional intimacy with both traditional stories and our own life stories so that we can better access and share the wisdom contained within.
About Jesse Williamson:
Jesse the Wind Wanderer is a Storyteller, Actor and Educator who has followed his dream to become a wandering bard since he was 14 years old. He performed his first solo show, an hour of stories, in 1998 and began his professional career as a storyteller in 2006. Over the last 12 years he’s performed at schools, libraries, parties and festivals and also had stories filmed by the Department of Education to be made into to teaching and learning materials. He is vice president of the Storytelling Guild of Australia (WA), produced the ‘Story Circuit’, a traditional storytelling performance for adults, holds a BA in Linguistics and Australian Indigenous Studies and is a qualified childcare professional (Dip, Children’s Services).
Duncan Smith – Using stories in Diversity and Inclusion work
To engage authentically with Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) means working with our values, beliefs, and behaviours, both conscious and unconscious. Personal stories are an essential tool to help us overcome barriers in all aspects of diversity.
Psychological safety and well being is a critical component of Diversity and Inclusion work — enabling a safe environment to explore sometimes emotionally resonant topics is essential to working well across lines of difference and sustaining truly inclusive groups and organisations. So it’s about creating workplaces that support mental and emotional health and well-being.
In this session we will explore the use of stories in D&I work – as facilitators, participants, and simply as people wanting to build stronger relationships across lines of difference anywhere in our lives. Stories help us to open up to and with others, to listen and learn, and to build bridges, and make connections.
About Duncan Smith:
Duncan Smith BA (Trinity), M Ed (Harvard) Duncan Smith specializes in improving decision-making and performance for organizations, teams, and individuals in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and the United States. One of the Asia-Pacific region’s most experienced consultants in diversity and inclusion, Duncan helps leaders increase their capacity to work well together by building trust, holding open and honest conversations that lead to better, more inclusive decisions and higher functioning teams that collectively solve problems and build stronger relationships across lines of difference. Duncan’s work includes leadership and executive team development, designing and implementing culturally appropriate diversity and inclusion solutions for multinational organizations, and facilitating critical conversations to overcome barriers in the areas of unconscious bias, gender and cultural diversity. Duncan is a member of the Expert Panel for the Global Inclusion and Diversity Benchmarks, a mentor for the Inclusion Allies Coalition, and in 2018 released the book Foundations of Diversity.
Simon Kneebone – Pictures of Health: 3 second stories
This workshop will give you the basics to wrestle your own thoughts and ideas about work, health and well-being into visual images that can communicate your message to others.
By the end of the session you will have at least one personal ‘3 second story’ ( roughly the time it takes a reader to ‘read’ a cartoon) that you can share through the Conference blog and beyond.
The workshop aims for participants to refine their own thoughts on the conference theme into at least one cartoon that can be shared with the conference and beyond. You will find yourself leaving this workshop with some basic skills in cartooning a ‘3 second story’ (the time it takes a reader to ‘read’ a cartoon) on any issue you are passionate about, that can be shared. Much more than just an emoji!
About Simon Kneebone:
Simon Kneebone is a cartoonist and illustrator with many years experience working with a range of community and other organisations, getting their messages into pictures that help communicate ideas effectively with humour and fun.
Leo Kelly – How “then” feeds now and other wow’s
Unlike a builder’s hammer or an artist’s brush our tools are sometimes not as easily defined. There are values in our stories past and these often underscore how we see, interpret and contribute to our current creations.
Understanding our stories and the values they hold can be the catalyst to applying our true selves in the work that we do.
Participants in this session will drill into the –values that matter, why they are important and what they look like in action. The session will be based around personal reflection, small group conversation, feedback, whole group sharing and play.
Through personal reflection and storytelling we can articulate and apply the organisation’s values in what we do. As we delve the things that matter we also articulate the benefit of what we do.
About Leo Kelly:
Leo Kelly brings a suite of curious skills together as a creative facilitator with a focus on building the space for conversation. A community development practitioner Leo has a journey that that ranges all the way from Melbourne’s 80’s music scene to corporate clowning, internal communications, films poetry, illustration and song. Leo approach to story is simple. Moments matter.
Mary Alice Arthur – Co-creating Well-being: Facilitating through Stories
Many organisations are today looking into how to adapt to the increased complexity and speed of change in business. When dealing with complexity we often speak of the need of fully accessing the capacity of everyone – but how do you support people to step up individually and bring their best capacity while still maintaining a strong collective core focus? How do you bring more commitment and meaning into the work you’re doing so that others want to be committed as well?
Storytelling and working with stories of projects, initiatives, organisations, teams and individuals can offer a bridge between knowledge and wisdom — a way to make it possible to capture both tacit knowledge and create shared vision. For leaders and managers, working with storytelling can improve communication and strengthen teamwork and collective action.
During our time together you will.. Learn how to work with the simple, yet powerful method of trio storytelling to seek out, design a process and work with stories to create shared understanding and action Hone your storytelling and storylistening skills to help you achieve impact and engagement in your work Experiment with a variety of harvesting methods This is a very hands on and active session. You will walk away with a palette of ideas to support your facilitation.
About Mary Alice Arthur:
Mary Alice Arthur is a Story Activist, using Story to help make positive systemic shift and for applying collective intelligence to the critical issues of our times. Her art is in creating spaces where people can find the stories that take them to their most flourishing future. Building the capacity for participatory practice supports people to take back the power of their stories so they can make wiser choices. She is a sought after process consultant and event host, and an engaging speaker. As an international steward of the Art of Hosting (http://www.artofhosting.org/) she teaches participatory practice around the world. Through Story the Future (http://www.storythefuture.com) she is spreading the meme of Story Activism, supporting people to develop their skills and practice and engaging in leading edge conversations about the power and potential in our world. http://www.getsoaring.com/
Cathryn Lloyd – Ebb & Flow: Creativity and Wellbeing
Creativity is our unique expression and way of being in the world. Just as the natural world ebbs and flows, declines or grows so too does our creativity particularly if we don’t value and nourish it. For our creative being to flourish and experience what the Ancient Greeks called Eudaimonia the idea of living well, paying attention to and having an intention for our creative life is a worthwhile pursuit. To create or not create…
This discovery-based workshop devotes attention and intention to this curious, wondrous and sometimes under explored and unknown aspect of our life. The workshop will help you inquire into where and how your creativity shows up. Why ebbing and flowing with creativity is part of the process. You are invited to explore your creative-being and nurture your well-being and develop a plan for your creative life and projects.
Research continues to provide evidence that engaging in the arts and valuing our creativity, particularly in terms of providing meaning, purpose, focus, autonomy, self worth and motivation is linked to a greater sense of wellbeing.
This workshop will see participants leaving with:
- A new found appreciation and value of their creativity
- A sense that creative wellbeing is possible
- Inspiration and plan for pursuing a creative life and projects
- Insight into the ebbs and flows within their creative life
About Cathryn Lloyd:
Cathryn Lloyd is Founder, Director of Maverick Minds Pty Ltd. Cathryn facilitates and coaches powerful and flexible learning experiences for leaders, managers, teams and professional individuals to help shift thinking, gain new perspectives and create positive long-term change. Cathryn loves working with others to create a space for inquiry and learning. Her experience across the arts, design, education, and business management sectors provides the foundation for a unique approach to the design and delivery of creative professional development workshops and programs. Maverick Minds clients include government, corporate, not for profit, universities, individuals and groups. Cathryn holds a research Doctorate in Creative Industries. She is Australia’s first certified creativity coach with the Creativity Coaching Association. She is the co-author of The Story Cookbook: practical recipes for Change published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Christine Hogan – Interactive storytelling techniques: Making myths meaningful and memorable
In this workshop, participants will be involved interactively with the story teller using traditional myths from many different cultures which focus on diversity.
We will discuss how these myths may be used and/or adapted to a variety of different learning contexts and cultural settings. We will engage actively in storytelling and also in:
- identifying fun and various ways of using myths in a variety of learning situations
- ways of debriefing myths so they are memorable as part of behaviour change
- creating a variety of “endings” to myths.
Myths from different cultures enable us all to gain new, different and deeper insights and perspectives into our work, health and well-being. Moreover, myths have resonance and their teachings are memorable and even change over time.
Participants will leave the workshop with:
- Interactive and new story telling techniques
- Myths from Brazil, Thailand, Bhutan and Indonesia
- A variety of de-briefing strategies for facilitators to use in behaviour change.
Ivan Chew – Our Perceptions of Wellbeing – An Interactive Dive
Using a mixture of improv-based activities, some design thinking and collaborative reflection, Ivan will help uncover the hidden beliefs and truths of what wellbeing means to different workplace archetypes. A high level strategy to enact the shift in behaviours to achieve those buried health goals will be explored as well.
The workplace is composed of not just the human interaction but also the physical built environment. The perception and use of those environment can either nurture, hinder or reward us with a greater sense of physical, mental and social wellbeing and in turn, a better end result for the organisation meeting their strategy.
About Ivan Chew:
Culture eats Strategy for breakfast – our behaviour shapes our experiences and interactions with our human, man-made and natural environments. From experiences as a Senior Workplace Strategist, construction Project Manager, coach, stage performer and puppeteer in organisations from the ABC, NSW Department of Finance and the private sector, a mix of skills can work in synergy – just like any workforce; you just need to find the connections. Currently completing a postgraduate course in psychology, Ivan brings a mix of play, perception and process to help those who seek it in the corporate and personal space.
Kate Lawrence -The Story is In the Details
After introducing the basics of story structure and the crafting process, participants will chose a personal memory they want to work on, and in groups of four, they will play a Story Game using this memory.
This game has been developed from experience coaching and crafting stories. It has been used many times in workshops with great feedback. The game is aimed at eliciting both the details and crafting nuances that create great story ‘telling’, and the depth of reflection and meaning making that makes a story meaningful.
This workshop will see you leaving with: A basket full of colour and movement from your memories, an experience of exploring the elements that go into making a story, listening as three others do the same, and a deeper understanding and connection to your own history, who you are and where you have come from.
About Kate Lawrence:
By the circuitous route of local government, community engagement and disaster preparedness, Kate Lawrence, who spent 17 years as a community lawyer, working for community legal centres and Victoria Legal Aid, is now a wee bit one-eyed about enabling human connection and understanding through through story, circle, purpose and play. Kate has deep and wide experience with these processes and passionately believes that can we use them to humanise the workplace. She is also an experienced performing storyteller and TEDx speaker.