In this October workshop, practitioners will explore how to help clients maintain perspective during challenging times. Using art, poetry, and reflective exercises, participants will learn practical techniques to support clients in recognizing their strengths and finding clarity amidst adversity. Through creative reflections, expressive art activities, and guided discussions, practitioners will work through their own cases / challenges to experience this way of working first hand and gain tools to help clients navigate difficulties with resilience, transforming challenges into opportunities for growth.
This session will empower practitioners to guide clients in finding balance and maintaining a sense of perspective, fostering resilience and adaptability through life’s storms.
Session outline:
In this monthly series of workshops, participants will learn creative approaches to help clients navigate anxiety and uncertainty. Leveraging art, poetry, and seasonal themes, practitioners will gain fresh perspectives to support clients in embracing uncertainty and finding calm amidst the unknown. Each session draws inspiration from the changing seasons to provide tools for deeper understanding and growth in client practice.
- Opening Reflection: Defining the supervision case and question through individual, guided reflection.
- Art Exploration: Participants explore a selected piece of art in pairs or small groups, discussing what emerges with their supervision question in mind. Emphasis on noticing other participants’ perspectives.
- Poetic Resonance: Reading the accompanying poem, followed by brief inquiries into words, phrases, and salient points that resonate.
- Second Reflection: Re-reading the poem, focusing on the individual supervision question.
- Creative Pairings: Breakout rooms for paired discussions on new, creative perspectives for the participant’s question.
- Group Debrief: Collective reflection on insights gained.
Art and poetry pieces will reflect the month and season, selected from Gillian’s ‘Choir of Brave Voices’ publications. Participants will receive these materials in PDF form, along with reflective practice prompts and background information to support personal and professional practice and client reflection.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- Apply creative and reflective approaches to help clients manage anxiety related to uncertainty.
- Use artistic and poetic prompts to explore clients’ responses to unpredictable situations.
- Develop new strategies to foster resilience and adaptability in clients facing the unknown.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Therapists, counsellors, supervisors, coaches and other professionals interested in enhancing their reflective practice and client work through creative approaches.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- Integrating creative reflection techniques into professional reflective practice supports practitioner learning and growth. Including these techniques in client work helps professionals address anxiety related to uncertainty, providing fresh approaches and stability in unpredictable times. This workshop will empower participants to use creativity as a tool to enhance their own practice and clients’ resilience and adaptability, fostering more dynamic and effective professional relationships.
Course Content
Presenter
Gillians is a coach, supervisor, mentor and author accredited by the ICF, EMCC, EASC and CSA.
She is the owner of Inside-Out Coaching and Brave Voice Books. British-born, she now lives and works in Switzerland.
Gillian’s first book Choir of Brave Voices is a light-hearted, yet transformational, seasonal journey…speak from our most authentic Brave Voice’ calms stress, deepens reflection, widens perspectives and increases mental, emotional and physical resourcefulness.
Shirley has extensive experience in cross-cultural work as a coach, mentor and supervisor of coaches and mentors. She often works with people who are working across cultures and might themselves be living in a different country from where they were born. Perhaps thinking in or speaking a language that is not their mother tongue. As a coach, supervisor and facilitator creative tools provide a gateway to a different way framing themes, discovering possibilities and expressing difficult emotions or dynamics when our constraint of language cannot readily or easily express what we are feeling or experiencing. From first-hand experience Shirley believes that imagery, art-based and embodied approaches can work both in-person and virtually. These are tools and skills that anybody can learn. Shirley has fine-tuned her skills in working with creative tools on a foundation of over 30 years in global human resource roles enabling both organisational and leadership development.
