This gentle and evocative session offers the space to consider the ‘crisis’, drawing on its potential, starting from its original connotation (the Ancient Greek words “krisis” and “krino,” meaning “to judge and decide” and “turning point”), to recognise and reclaim our capabilities, strength, creativity and clarity. The session includes guided activities, applying the process of generative thinking and writing (moments of creative meaning making – in words, marks, doodles), to engender an appreciation of our creative resourcefulness in moments of adversity, reviving our awareness of helpful solutions, innate wisdom and compassion, and reconnecting crisis with our primordial intuition.
Working with the group’s synergies, it is possible to explore collective consciousness and strengths, and evoke self-compassion, to attend to the task of ‘meeting the crisis’ and ‘reframing’ its apparent challenges in future occurrences.
“I would share this event to anyone who has lived or living experience of mental ill health. The term ‘crisis’ is defined/redefined and explored to show how a crisis can inform recovery via way of self-reflection and other
necessary stages”
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- Participate in this workshop as a way of untangling negative assumptions from revelations of strength and authentic resourcefulness, in our own and our clients’ readings and interpretations of a crisis (or any word associated with challenge, fear, adversity and deep seated uncertainty, all of which matter).
- Practise utilising short intentional exercises to support clarity and compassionate decision making based on personal strengths and lived experience, beyond or in addition to spoken interaction.
- Explore the potential of group work for meaning-making, to offer generative spaces for compassion and action.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Anyone hoping to engage in reflection and meaning-making; therapists, coaches and socially-engaged practitioners. and those who work in trauma-informed ways.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- This workshop offers the tools to support individuals and groups facing uncertainties or difficulties, redressing the unhelpful connotations that are associated with a crisis (challenge or decision making) and its entanglement with potentially adverse conditions.
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-).
