Getting Creative with Trauma: Part 2

ONLINE Professional Development Workshop

10am – 4pm Sunday 18th October 2020

1 hour lunch + 2 x 15 minute breaks

$125 per person – pandemic discount

• Art based responses to grief, loss and trauma
• Intergenerational relationships
• Multi-dimensional perspectives
• Creating a new relationship with the past and healing the future.

With co-facilitators Dr Carla van Laar and leading Aboriginal Art Therapist Tara Harriden.

AND special guest, Polyvagal Psychologist and Author, Paul North.

This workshop follows on from Getting Creative with Trauma: Part 1.

“Part 2 expands into intergenerational healing. We include traditional Indigenous wisdom and contemporary polyvagal theory in this workshop, as well as process work that involves using arts based methods to facilitate a healing encounter with an ancestor”.

Dr Carla van Laar

In Part 2 we engage in multimodal methods including visual arts, ritual and drama and focus on ancestral and intergenerational healing.

Part 1 looked at understanding a bottom- up approach to therapy and linked ideas from the triune brain with the expressive therapies continuum (ETC). We engaged in practical exercises that moved from somatic regulation, through relational and emotional connection, to creating new and empowering narratives and shared stories we can live within.

Part 2 expands into intergenerational healing. We include traditional Indigenous wisdom and contemporary polyvagal theory in this workshop, as well as process work that involves using arts based methods to facilitate a healing encounter with an ancestor.

In this workshop we experientially inquire into how continuity co-exists with change: linking moments in time; connecting and healing past, present and future; passing meanings from our ancestors to us to our descendants; weaving through memories, experiences and imagination; moving through journeys of growing, unfolding and becoming; fertilising, seeding, germinating and blossoming; shaping, forming and crafting our relationships; and spinning threads that contain messages and legacies connecting our histories and our dreams in a shared web of meaning.

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“There is a word in Wiradjuri language: YINDYAMARRA which can be translated to mean “respect” and is also a kind of philosophy, in which gentleness, kindness, deep listening, and learning to do things slowly are embedded. This is the spirit in which I invite my clients to work with me in my Art Therapy studio.”

– Tara Harriden

Tara Harriden AThR, one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal Art Therapists, is currently completing her PhD research into using culturally sensitive, art based, clinical supervision  methods to support psychosocial support workers who work with Indigenous people in remote communities.

With a Master of Mental Health majoring in Art Therapy from the University of Queensland’s School of Medicine, Tara specialises in helping people find creative solutions to their own life’s challenges. 

Tara brings her wisdom of cultural creative practices and shares some of the ways she brings Indigenous knowledge into her art therapy practice.

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Paul North is an Author and Principal Psychologist at his practice, PartnershipsPlus. Paul has over 32 years experience in the disability sector and is an NDIS registered Behaviour Specialist. Having also worked with children in Out of Home Care and past and serving Veterans, Paul is passionate about reducing suffering and mental illness by enhancing health and well-being. Paul is also trained in the Safe and Sound Protocol developed by Prof. Stephen, creator of Polyvagal Theory, and welcomes opportunities to teach people about this brilliant therapeutic application. He has co-authored a polyvagal informed children’s book with Dr Lydia So entitled “Safe and Sound, A story of a little girl who overcomes fear”. The book has been endorsed by Prof. Porges.

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Dr Carla van Laar is a painter and therapeutic arts practitioner from Australia. Born in Brisbane, Carla is first generation Australian on her Dutch grandparents side, and 7th generation through her maternal bloodline who were mostly English and came to Australia in the early colonisation of the 1800s. Carla currently lives and works in Victoria, residing between Wurrundjeri country in Melbourne, and Boon Wurrung country in Inverloch, paying deep respects to the First Peoples of the Kulin Nations whose land was never ceded and will always be Aboriginal land. Identifying as a cisgender woman, Carla is passionately disinterested in socially constructed identities that disempower anyone. Carla has over 25 years’ experience working with people and the arts for health and well-being in community organisations, justice, health and education contexts, and is the author of “Bereaved Mother’s Heart” and “Seeing Her Stories”. Her Doctoral research revealed the potential of the arts in intergenerational healing, and Carla brings these findings to life through experiential processes in “Getting Creative with Trauma – Part 2”.