Toronto International Summer School of Narrative Practice
Toronto, Canada, 7–9 July 2010
Welcome to the Toronto International Summer School of Narrative Practice! This is shaping up to be one of our most exciting narrative therapy training events yet!
Latest information for Summer School participants - click here.
Final program has just been emailed to all participants (see workshop descriptions and handouts below):
Pre-conference workshops and training
An introduction to narrative therapy – Ruth Pluznick and Angel Yuen (Monday 5 July)
In this one-day introduction to narrative therapy, Angel and Ruth will assist participants to develop an understanding of 'How stories shape our lives'. Included in the introduction will be the key concepts of narrative therapy, including externalisation, re-authoring, and re-membering practices. Workshop participants will also be given opportunities to practice skill development through guided experiential exercises. Drawing on rich traditions of narrative therapy in public practice in the diverse city of Toronto, Angel and Ruth will provide an introduction to narrative therapy that includes considerations of social justice. This workshop is appropriate for anyone new to narrative therapy and to those who have some familiarity but are not yet practicing. Download workshop handout
Re-storying grief through re-membering practices – Lorraine Hedtke (Monday 5 July)
This one-day workshop asks the intriguing question: If death doesn’t mean saying goodbye, how are we freed to grieve differently? Lorraine and John show how to develop relational narratives that live on after a physical death. The workshop outlines how narrative conversations about death and grief are less about the passive suffering of loss and more about growing invigorating identity stories amid the ongoing transitions that death occasions. Lorraine Hedtke and John Winslade are the co-authors of the book Re-membering lives: Conversations with the dying and the bereaved. Download workshop handout
Responding to hardship – Cheryl White and David Denborough (Tuesday 6 July)
When we are responding to individuals, groups, or communities who are enduring significant hardship, we are witness to stories of anguish and devastation. But there are always openings to other stories too: stories of psychological and social resistance. Collective narrative practices offer creative and effective ways of working with these multiple storylines to alleviate suffering and at the same time to spark and sustain local social action. How can we contribute to rich story development and enable those we are working with to make contributions to others? How can we co-develop ways of working that are effective, culturally resonant, and easy to engage with so that community members themselves can put them into practice with those they care about? This workshop will outline the key principles of collective narrative practice with individuals, groups and communities. Cheryl White and David Denborough work at Dulwich Centre, Adelaide.
Working with violence – Tod Augusta-Scott and Mimi Kim (Tuesday 6 July)
This special event will feature two half-day presentations and discussion around the crucial issue of working with and responding to violence. Tod Augusta-Scott will share the ways in which his conversations with men who have engaged in violence focus on both social and individual responsibility and consider the power relations of gender, class, and race. Mimi Kim will share the work of Creative Interventions: Resources for Everyday People to End Violence, which is committed to creating and promoting community-based interventions to interpersonal violence: domestic or intimate partner, sexual, and family violence. Creative Interventions is open to all, and prioritises communities of colour, immigrant, and queer communities. For a more detailed description of these workshops, see our latest information for participants.
Download Tod Augusta-Scott's workshop handout
Cost
Cost for each pre-conference workshop is CND$125.
Keynote addresses
We will be posting summaries and handouts for the Summer School keynote addresses here soon.
Talking about suicidal thoughts: Collaboration in action, Loree Stout
Loree will share some of her work with women who have experienced significant and recurrent trauma in childhood and, as adults, are subject to being ambushed by suicidal thoughts. The presentation will highlight the use of collective narrative practices in her work with individuals to link their experiences to those of others and to enable them to make a contribution to others. A framework for remaining in collaborative and hopeful positions, informed by the women’s wisdom and knowledge, will be presented. Download presentation handout
What is the 'stance' in resistance?, Seckneh Beckett
Download Sekneh's article 'Azima ila hayati - An invitation in to my life: Narrative conversations about sexual identity'
Presentations within the Summer School
1. Introducing narrative therapy, Ruth Pluznick & Angel Yuen
This workshop will provide an introductory overview of the theory and practice of narrative therapy. It will cover key concepts and terms, and provide examples of narrative practice in different contexts. Download workshop handout
2. Re-membering in response to grief: Group contexts, Lorraine Hedtke
Bereavement counselling is often conducted in a group setting. How to do this with a narrative and relational emphasis will be the focus of this workshop. This will be an experiential workshop which will also include an explanation of a framework for practice. Download workshop handout
3. Mindfulness practice meets narrative therapy, David Paré
Narrative therapy and mindfulness approaches speak with different (and sometimes overlapping) vocabularies emerging from different traditions. Both traditions offer rich possibilities for relieving human suffering. This workshop is for therapists interested in enriching their narrative work by incorporating mindfulness approaches into their practice. Download workshop handout
4A. Bridging the generations in immigrant communities, Thilaka Xavier, Joyce Edem, Patty Hayes, Suzanne Young
This workshop will offer practitioners hopeful ideas about how narrative practices can be used to support intergenerational alliances within immigrant and refugee communities. It will describe work that has taken place over the last 18 months in St James Town in Toronto. It will build upon the morning keynote address.
Talking about privilege, cultural sensitivity, and ancestry
5A. The Privilege Project, Shawn Patrick
Understanding one’s relationship to privilege is crucial in developing multicultural counselling competence. As part of The Privilege Project, counselling students were asked to write letters to their ancestors to talk about the effects of privilege they experience. These students have volunteered to share their letters as a way to honour their history while voicing their commitment to social justice. This presentation will convey the stories and significance of this process. Dowload workshop handout
5B. The Tilden Street Cultural Sensitivity Series, June Helme & Jamila Codrington
Our staff has developed a grassroots initiative committed to recognising the micro-cultures of each family. We will present specific organisational strategies, experiential exercises, and the narrative therapy concepts that have assisted us in moving from a medical (deficit-focussed) model toward committing to collaboration, strengths identification, cultural sensitivity, and the empowerment of children and families. Download handout 1 Download handout 2 Download handout 3 Download handout 4 Download handout 5
5C. Considering ethical transgressions, Christopher Chapman
This presentation will describe particular ways of using narrative ideas to consider the implications of ethical transgressions. Within a recent social work ethics course, shaped by collective narrative practices, students reflected on an event from their life or practice in which they had committed an ethical transgression, while in a position of relative power. The students were then interviewed using ‘invitations to responsibility’ questions while others were invited to join with the interviewee using an outsider-witness approach. Download workshop handout
6. The absent but implicit, Jodi Aman
This workshop will describe the therapeutic ideas of Michael White around the concept of ‘the absent but implicit’, including the history of the ideas, and a ‘map’ of therapeutic conversations using the absent but implicit metaphor. Practical examples will portray different applications, as well as an exercise for therapists to hone their skills.
7. Parent-teen conflict dissolution, Ninetta Tavano
This workshop will describe how Michael White’s ‘conflict dissolution map’ can be used with parents and adolescents to assist in ‘dissolving’ conflict in narrative therapy sessions. It will explore how the practice of ‘repositioning’ can be combined with definitional ceremony and outsider-witness practices to allow people to re-engage with family members, based on care and respect. Download workshop handout
8. Linking narrative practice to family group conferencing and wrap-around, Jacqueline Jean-Pierre, Cathy Blocki-Radeke, Inshira Hassabu
At Oolagen Community Services, Wraparound facilitators and narrative therapists have been working side by side for years, creating a very powerful, inclusionary, and collaborative partnership. At the same time, family group conferencing practitioners in Toronto have been developing creative and effective ways of responding to families in crisis. This workshop will provide an opportunity for Wraparound facilitators, narrative therapists, and family group conferencing practitioners to become more familiar with each other’s ways of working in order to enrich and expand the voice and choice of the families and individuals with whom we work.
9. Use of metaphor and visual language within narrative practice, Ruth Dorfman & Bonnie Miller
Metaphors help us to make sense of the world. This workshop will explore how we can bring forward the metaphors people use in describing their lives. Specifically, we will look at how ‘the absent but implicit’ can be used in conjunction with metaphors, as well as how metaphors can be used in both externalisation and re-authoring conversations. Download workshop handout
10. Showcasing the narrative practices of Palestinian and Rwandan therapists and the work of the Mt Elgon Self-Help Community Project, Cheryl White & David Denborough (Dulwich Centre Foundation)
The Dulwich Centre Foundation is working in partnership with the Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Torture (TRC) in Palestine, and with Ibuka, the national genocide survivors’ association in Rwanda. This workshop will showcase some of the creative ways in which therapists in these contexts are using narrative ideas to respond to trauma. It will also describe the groundbreaking work of the Mt Elgon Self-help community project in using narrative ideas to spark social action and economic development projects in Uganda.
11. Narrative, collaborative, and restorative/transformative justice therapies for the effects of sexual abuse, Walter Bera
This workshop will explore creative narrative approaches to address the often multiple and complex individual, relational, and multigenerational effects of incest and childhood sexual abuse. It will cover ways of using narrative, collaborative, and restorative/transformational justice approaches with people who have been abused, those who have abused, the people who care about them, the involved professionals, and their communities.
12. Translating the word and the world, Marianna Sussi
My work with immigrant people involves working with an interpreter most of the time, and ‘sessions’ usually happen in people’s houses. The role that the interpreter has is not only translating the word; it is also interpreting culture. At the same time, when the client and the interpreter share the same background, the interpreter becomes a link between the client and their community.
13. Out of the mud the lotus blooms: Women who have experienced violence transform trauma through clay, Susan Low-Beer & Suzanne Thomson
Over the past seven years, women create sculptures and collaboratively design art exhibits to educate the public about violence against women. Participants were interested in a unique group experience where they attend to their own internal healing through the creation of their sculpture and create a product to promote a voice of activism within the community. People partaking in this workshop will respond to the women’s art work and stories through clay. No art experience is necessary.
14. Doing justice and the insider-knowledge of shelter folk, Vikki Reynolds
Vikki offers a hope-filled response to the question of how we can ‘do justice’ in our work by weaving stories of resistance from different contexts including Chile, Tibet, and Vancouver, from human rights defenders, survivors of torture, and shelter folks. The insider-wisdom of shelter folks and housing workers will be brought forward through video and transcripts. Download handout 1 Download handout 2 Download handout 3 Download handout 4 Visit Vikki Reynold's website
15. Practicing narrative therapy in modernist settings: Innovative approaches to assessment, diagnosis, treatment plans, charting, and more!, Walter Bera
Over its eight years of existence, the Kenwood Center has developed innovative approaches to common dilemmas in practicing narrative therapy in the established “modernist” or structuralist cultural context of modern power. Learn ethical, respectful, honoring and narrative approaches to issues of client assessment, diagnosis, treatment plans, charting, insurance, “empirically validated” treatment and more.
16. Finding resiliency, standing tall: Exploring trauma, hardship, and healing with refugees, Mike Boucher
This workshop will explore individual and collective ways that people can assist refugees in responding to both the problems they face, and their resistance to the effects of those problems on their lives. Specifically, attention will be paid to developing questions and contexts that help refugees attend to and heal experiences of hardship and trauma in their lives. Download workshop handout 1 and workshop handout 2
17. Innovations in narrative therapy, Jim Duvall & Karen Young
This workshop will present the results of a research project involving the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, Gail Appel Institute, the University of Toronto, and King’s University College. The project’s three primary areas of study will be illustrated in this workshop – developing storyline maps, circulation of language, and pivotal moments. Experiential exercises and video examples will used to illustrate concepts. Download workshop handout
18A. Local knowledge as legitimate knowing: The use of collective documents in Mexico, Alfonso Diaz-Smith
This presentation will explore three examples of creating collective documents in México: with farmers from the desert of Zacatecas; weaving the voices of Zapotec women in response to violence; and with the queer community in Oaxaca to find collective ways to respond to discrimination. These documents have enabled the recognition, honouring, and legitimisation of ‘local knowledges’, and have linked communities around political action.
18B. Storytelling and community organizing to challenge interpersonal and state violence, Rachel Herzing and Isaac Ontiveros
In this workshop, Creative Interventions will share its StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP), offering the underlying principles behind story telling as a tool for organizing, the unique elements of STOP and its privileging of community-based, non-state responses to violence and some of the uses of story telling among its partners internationally.
18C. Songs as documentation. David Denborough
How can music and song accompany narrative practice? How can alternative storylines become songlines? This workshop will include discussion and the sharing of songs.
19. Initiative and agency: Narrative therapy and acts of change, Gene Combs & Jill Freedman
People are always taking initiatives. Problems often obscure them, but once we recognize them they can be regarded as expressions of personal agency. This workshop will include some videotape examples of highlighting initiatives in therapy and developing stories from them that provide people with experiences of agency. Examples of unpacking the history and relationships that contribute to an initiative will be included.
20. Narrative approaches to preventing child admission to care: A single session model for working with families involved with child protective services, Richard Langhorne & Ruth Dorfman
This workshop will explore ways of engaging families overtaken by crisis, and preventing the unnecessary admission of children into protective care. Workshop participants will learn how narrative practices such as externalisation, re-authoring, and re-remembering can effectively be implemented in a single session. Attention will also be paid to the sustaining value of a family’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations
Art and narrative practices
21A. Art therapy with children: From hospitals to aged care settings, Lisa Nackan
This workshop will present two different projects involving art therapy and children. Frist, Lisa will speak about a project on anaphylaxis and anxiety with a group of students whose lives have been touched by anaphylaxis - a life-threatening response to allergy. The culmination of this project will be the creation of a DVD in which children will disrupt the definition of 'the allergic child'. Second, Lisa will present on a project which linked primary school students with elderly residents of an aged care facility. Students interviewed residents about their life, dreams, hopes, and accomplishments, and then made multi-media artworks about the residents’ lives, to be used with health workers, and to adorn the facility.
21B. Bereaved parents in personal commemorative films, Bilha Bachrach
This study examines 20 commemorative films of bereaved parents who have lost a child. The analysis of the films sheds light on the narrative reconstruction process expressed in them and allows the ‘voice of the survivor’ to be heard. Download workshop handout
21C. The Tree of Life in residential care settings, Ruth Pluznick
This presentation will introduce the popular narrative Tree of Life methodology and include examples of how it has been used in Toronto in residential care settings.
22A. Redemption in the face of personal and childhood trauma, Hillel Zeren, Gid’on Friedman, Chana Rachel Frumin
We have been working these last five years taking stands against the influence of trauma and its nefarious consequences. In this workshop, we will explore aspects of redeeming our lives from acute adult and childhood trauma. These practices will include management of the ‘space’ that trauma takes, exploring safety as an anti-trauma stance, and folding trauma into an entire life scheme. Download workshop handout 1 Download workshop handout 2
22B. Narrative responses to trauma, Angel Yuen
This brief presentation will provide some narrative ideas in working with families where a child has experienced trauma. By sharing a story of a boy named Mark, Angel will illustrate how children’s skills and knoweledges are rarely constructed on their own.
23. Narrative therapy with couples and relationships, Jill Freedman & Gene Combs
How can narrative therapy be used to engage couples and relationships? Jill Freedman and Gene Combs, the authors of the popular books ‘Narrative therapy: the social construction of preferred realities’ and ‘Narrative therapy with couples and a whole lot more’ will provide new possibilities for practitioners working with couples.
24A. Narrative work in schools, Angel Yuen
Angel will share some of her work in schools with young persons who are grieving the loss of a friend / sibling due to violence. This presentation will be relevant to anyone interested in collective narrative practices and how to create contexts for young people to make contributions to each other when dealing with traumatic times.
24B. Building preferred stories, Niels-Henrik Sørensen
This workshop will showcase a mentoring program with teachers and students at a technical school, making ‘artefacts’ to help build preferred stories. These creations were then shown in exhibitions, which provided ways for people to share these stories. The project involved an ethnographer and researcher from a local university, who have studied how narrative practice helps organisations build preferred outcomes.
24C. Group work with boys in ultra-orthodox, special education yeshiva, Hillel Zeren
What are the challenges that would face teenage boys at an ultra-orthodox, special education yeshiva (learning seminary)? Hillel found ways to work with boys labelled as having a 'learning deficiency' which allowed them to stand outside of this limited description. This work involved an innovative approach to using reflecting team work that offers many possibilities for other group contexts.
25A. Rendering responses visible: The effects of building a history of personal agency in therapy, Katy Batha
Problems have an amazing knack of robbing people of awareness of their ability to take effective actions. A powerful antidote can be conversations which render visible the arc of responses a person has already made. This presentation will map the conversational shape as it moves from a recounting of problematic events, through the enunciation of existing personal agency, to an evocation of preferred purposes and values.
25B. Substance misuse and disordered eating practices in the lives of young women, Christine Dennstedt
This workshop will be relevant to people working with young women struggling with disordered eating practices and/or substance misuse problems. This workshop will offer ways of moving beyond traditional practices of addressing these problems as distinct and separate from each other and will look at the interplay that exists between these problems in the lives of young women. Download workshop handout
26. Giving young people a sporting chance: The Team of Life, Viviane Oliveira, David Denborough, & Eileen Hurley
The ‘Team of Life’ collective narrative methodology is becoming a popular way to engage young people in conversations about hardship using sporting metaphors. This workshop will present on employing the Team of Life in varied contexts, including during Viviane’s travels through a range of South American countries. Download workshop handout
Welcoming events
A series of events will welcome participants to this International Summer School of Narrative Practice. These include:
- July 6: Free evening welcoming drinks event
- July 6: Women’s lunch
- July 5: Queer welcoming dinner
- A bike-tour of Toronto Island
- Toronto Island visit
For more on these welcoming events, please see our latest information for participants.
The Toronto International Summer School of Narrative Practice is a partnership between Dulwich Centre, Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto, and Oolagen Community Services. As the organisers and conference collective, we hope to create an opportunity for participants to build a sense of connectedness and to contribute to the building of a community of ideas. Throughout our planning, we hope to create an atmosphere that is non-hierarchical, with no pronounced difference between presenters and participants. We will also create a context in both the lead-up and during the conference itself so that the focus remains on everyone’s contributions to a community event.
Venue
Oakham House (also known as Ryerson University Student Campus Centre)
55 and 63 Gould Street
Toronto, Ontario
For a map and directions, click here.
The Summer School itself is to be held at Oakham House at 55 Gould Street. Please can you ensure that you get to the venue early on the first day (Wednesday) in order to register before the welcome and opening keynote which starts at 9am. We will be there from 8am so please come and have a cup of tea or coffee, or even some breakfast and settle in before it all gets started.
Cost
Cost for the three-day Summer School is CND$ 485
To register
To register, contact the Course Co-ordinator, Dulwich Centre:
Email:
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Hutt St PO Box 7192
Adelaide 5000 South Australia
Fax: +(61-8) 8232 4441
Phone : +(61-8) 8223 3966
Or download the registration form here.
About the Narrative Therapy Centre (NTC) of Toronto
The NTC of Toronto is a narrative training project offering training and supervision since 2004 in narrative therapy and collective practices. The NTC’s core faculty has been using narrative ideas for almost twenty years and is pleased to be connected to, and a part of, a larger community of practitioners both locally and internationally.
About Oolagen Community Services
Oolagen Community Services is a non-profit children's mental health centre for young people 13–18 years of age and their families, who live in Toronto and come from all cultures and walks of life. Ideas and practices which shape programs and services at Oolagen are informed by narrative therapy and social justice. Included in these programs are a walk-in, individual and family therapy, residential services, and on-site programs at local schools and child protection agencies. Oolagen is also engaged in community projects, most notably the St. James Town Intergenerational Alliance for Tamil grandparents and grandchildren and the 'Gathering stories of families where a parent is experiencing mental health difficulties' project with Dulwich Centre. Oolagen has provided on-site training in narrative therapy for many agencies and people within the community and is a teaching centre for University of Toronto.
