Iwa Rere Arts Enterprises provides expressive arts infused professional development to non-profit, public and private entities.
The philosophical premise of all offered trainings is that radical expressive arts both bears witness to personal and political injustices and salves the psyche so voice, agency and hope can flourish. This engaging autoethnographic process has an eye trained on illumining and mending intrapsychic and socio-historic inequities. These trainings are suitable for mental health and social service providers, social workers, teachers, community and cultural workers and others interested in examining and rescripting trauma narratives.
- Enhanced self knowledge
- Formation of worldview and personal /group identity
- Self- authoring a liberatory narrative
- Enhanced understanding of interconnectedness
Trainings can be developed or tailored to the specific needs of your organisation.
Transformative Storytelling: Reauthoring the trauma narrative via an expressive art writing process.
Storytelling is the warp and weft of the tapestries of our life. It is the connective tissues of our knowing and relating to self and other. Here we look at radical transformative storytelling as a creative and visionary ethno-autobiographical process of authoring the self as protagonist in one’s own narrative
Expressive arts for professionals working with traumatised youth and families.
Art saves lives. Here we explore how Injuries to the human spirit reside in the heart—metaphor for the psyche– and the healing of said injures likewise, there dwell. Art is a language of the heart and affords us means of bypassing the survival defences to unmask the hidden. We explore multiple creative avenues of art and consciousness.
Deconstructing violence from the inside out: Naming the faces of violence
Claiming a new vocabulary. Here we analyse a society wrought with intentional and unconscious toxicity towards our human citizenry. Walking in the world unconscious of our driving forces may be a current state-of-being but is not an excuse for our harmful behaviour towards one another. We name the multiple faces of violence against self and others so that we might treat the disruptions of humanity.
Wails of my ancestors: Conscious nonviolent parenting with African ancestried families
Climbing the backs of my ancestors. Here we examine at how the self and worldviews are developed and how socio-historic trauma informs identity, worth and familial patterns. We look at the necessity for concurrent national introspections, with goals of dismantling structural and institutional inequities that curtail justice, participatory democracy and human decency.
Resilience strategies for service providers… Existential despair Vs. hope and agency in a pandemic crisis
Reclamation of hope. Here, we examine the possibilities of self and society as inseparably bonded in I am because you are philosophies, for when we are unambiguously connected, we tend to care for a resilient self within a contextual consciousness of communal relationships. We look at mind-body connections and routines of self-celebratory care
Parallel Processes: Liberatory dialogic self-reflection
The work is in the mirror. Here is a call for those of us who dare to call ourselves visionaries and change agents to task ourselves with parallel processes of internal and external examination. As artists and visionaries, educator, faith-based practitioners, child welfare professionals, etc. unconscious material can have dire consequences for those we are charged to serve. Liberatory dialogic self-reflective journaling offers a process of asking and answering unexamined questions of the heart.
A partial list of Clients:
- Seneca Institute for Advanced Practice
- Kaiser Hospital/SEIU Ed Foundation
- Bay Area Academy
- UC-Berkeley- School of Social Welfare
- A Better Way
- Community College of San Francisco
- Edgewood Family Services
- California Symposium on: Fairness and Equity Issues in Child Welfare
- Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
- SF Department of Human Services