Andrew S Gilbert – Using Narrative techniques with young people before the courts
An understanding of how narrative techniques can be used to improve the agency of young people before the courts and how these techniques are applicable in areas such as workplace supervision and clarifying the values and goals of an organisation.
Narrative Therapy Techniques can be creatively applied to a wide range of workplace challenges.Seeing how it works in the challenging environment of youth justice allows participants to imagine how it might apply to other workplace situations.
This session would include an explanation and examples of Narrative Therapy techniques. A description of specific Narrative techniques used in counselling sessions with young people. A short practical session exploring a narrative technique using story elements and led discussion on how they might be successfully utilised in other workplace settings.
About Andrew S Gilbert:
Andrew S Gilbert has a extensive background as a celebrated actor in Film,Television and Theatre.He is also a widely experienced teacher and lecturer in Screen studies and acting at a Tertiary level.He presently works for Boston University Study Abroad program,as a Corporate trainer for NIDA and works In the Justice System with young offenders and various upstream programs preventing violence against women.He also has a private Narrative Therapy Practice. He is a graduate in Acting from the WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAPPA) and has Masters in Applied Theatre Studies(UNE)and Graduate Certificate in Narrative Therapy and Community Work (LaTrobe).
Johanna de Ruyter – The Body of Story
Stories move us, and they move through us in ways we are not conscious to or at least not generally listening to. The body is another teller of your story and sometimes it can unintentionally tell a whole other story. What happens to the story when we let our bodies tell the story?
By focusing on the body as a storyteller, we enable another understanding of story to be revealed and to emerge outside of our logic (logos – words). Our bodies are imprinted by stories and seek their moment to speak. In this workshop, we will listen to the Body of Story.
Engaging in body based experiences lend a healing hand to maintaining self care. Culturally we are driven by our mind and our thoughts with this function often working overtime to make sense of our world. This can be energetically draining and we can get confused by what is real – our thoughts, our senses, our stories? My work aims to integrate and align all of our intelligences – mind, feeling, physical, gut, intuitive for a greater sense of wholeness and presence in how we show up and communicate with others.
About Johanna de Ruyter:
Johanna is passionate about getting people moving and utilizing movement and action for deepening expanding and strengthening communication. For over twenty years now she has been exploring the complementary relationship of communication and the performing arts. She completed a Diploma in Movement at The Drama Action centre in Sydney, she obtained a BA in Communication, a Diploma in Remedial Massage and a Black and Brown belt in two different Martial Arts. She has worked as an actor and collaborator on various award-winning improvised theatre projects both nationally and internationally and is a long-term improviser, facilitator and trainer with Playback Theatre Sydney. For over 8 years she has facilitated training in Leadership Presence throughout the Asia Pacific region for the Ariel Group. She also designs and delivers experientially based Training, Coaching and Presentations programs for a range of clients through her own company Moving Communication.
Chris Riedy – Finding Transformative Narratives, Exploring Our Common Ground
Humanity is faced with a transformative challenge; we must find new ways of living within planetary boundaries while ensuring that all have access to basic human rights. In meeting this challenge, we need new transformative narratives to help us clearly see the challenges we face and the dangers that lie ahead, capture visions of the future we want, share successful strategies, show individuals how they can play a part in the collective transformation, and build motivation to act.
The focus of my workshop is on transformative narratives that can help us collectively make progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Achieving these goals would have huge positive impacts on health and well-being for people around the world. For the participants, having a sense of a shared positive narrative is likely to contribute positively to their personal sense of well-being.
This workshop will take a diverse group of participants through a process of discovering and documenting the narrative of a sustainable future that they hold dear, and then finding common ground with other participants. The session ties in with the ongoing work of the Meta-Narrative Working Group of the SDG Transformations Forum (https://www.transformationsforum.net/). This group is working to build the systems that can transform narratives, through analysing narratives, connecting those who are working on narrative and experimenting with narrative interventions.
About Chris Riedy:
Chris Riedy is Professor of Sustainability Governance and Director of Higher Degree Research at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney. He is a transdisciplinary academic with a research interest in governance and social change for sustainable futures. Chris draws on sociological and political theory, narrative theory, futures thinking and transformative science to design, facilitate and evaluate practical experiments in transformative change towards sustainable futures. Chris is Lead Steward of the Meta-Narrative Working Group under the SDG Transformation Forum, an organisation working to develop systems to support transformation towards the Sustainable Development Goals. He has led more than 80 research projects including current work on megatrends and scenarios for the City of Sydney’s Sustainable Sydney 2050 initiative and pioneering research on collaborative housing as an option for older Australians. He has published two books, more than 40 peer-reviewed articles or chapters, more than 60 research reports and hundreds of web articles.
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.