‘Altered books’ are a great starting point for utilising creativity in the therapeutic space, in a joyful and disruptive experience that offers a progressive process of co-creation. Inspired by the Dada movement and New Materialism, the practice of altering found objects for self-expression and meaning making can be extended to the therapeutic encounter in productive ways.
Merging personal expression with synergies and the words on the page, ‘Altered books’ invite experiences that are born of resonances and memories; becoming art pieces made by changing the role and appearance of existing books into vessels for new and unexpected ideas. Experience adopting a variety of simple techniques, such as covering, folding, painting, or collage, to create and explore a process of self-discovery that is ‘bound’, using the live moment to transform and respond to the page and its evocative power.
Essential materials: An unwanted book (you can buy a book that you are happy to re-purpose at a flea market/second-hand store/charity shop or from a community book-swap). Pens, pencils, oil pastels, markers, glue stick (or tape), magazine/newspaper cut-outs.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- The session will offer a live experiential activity for you to experience the possibility of utilising found objects as accessible creative vessels for self-expression. Clients can adopt this process as a rhythmic tool each time you meet.
- Learn to integrate arts-based and play methods to evoke self-discovery and healing, and generate new ways of thinking through synergies, populating a tangible repository of experiences over time.
- Employ a process of intra-action (Barad) to engage self-expression, joy and healing.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Therapists, coaches and socially-engaged practitioners working with individuals, couples, groups and colleagues in the helping professions. Especially if you have a desire to reengage your own creative potential.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- This workshop offers an evocative experience and a tool for transformation (tangible and processual), creative play and self-discovery that are generative and can be ‘held’ in material form.
- Expand your therapeutic offer by adopting an accessible creative outlet for co-creation and self-expression, transcending and extending word-based interactions. Especially helpful when working with clients who speak English as a second or additional language.
Course Content
Presenter
Dr. Francesca Bernardi PhD is an advocate, author, coach, and artist, with expertise in MA supervision, dis/ability and community engagement. Francesca has an extensive background as a teacher and artist-in-residence, working with children and adults in various settings, including schools, alternative provision, further and higher education, corporate settings, museums, and public spaces (Tate Museums and the RSA.org). She’s dedicated to working with parents and caregivers of children and young people with dis/abilities who have experienced school exclusions and other forms of social discrimination.
Francesca engages in multi-disciplinary and arts-informed practices with marginalized communities, and individuals experiencing loss and homelessness. Her approach is non-hierarchical, socially just, and creative, aiming to nourish healing and personal agency while honouring the wholeness of individuals’ personhood, choices, and capabilities.
Francesca has published her work on autism, arts-informed methodologies, childhood, and children’s rights in books and journals (Bloomsbury, Routledge, Taylor and Francis). She is the founding chair of the Antonio Gramsci Society UK, board member of the Disability Without Abuse Project (2020-), and an Associate Member of CATA/ACAT (the Canadian Art Therapy Association 2021-).
