The Scottish Recovery Network and Scottish Poetry Library’s Living Voices programme are collaborating to deliver a series of workshops on Working Creatively with Small Groups, the first of which, dealing with Talking, Listening and Storying, will take place at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on Friday 7 October.
This workshop will focus on looking specifically at the skills involved in facilitating small groups, and the ways in which creativity and wellbeing can support each other. The session will look at story sharing in the context of the core participative skills and attitudes which will be explored across the series, hosted by Donald Smith of TRACS and John McCormack from the Scottish Recovery Network.
In their Write to Recovery project, the Scottish Recovery Network encourage those affected by mental health problems to experience recovery by creating and taking control of their own story. Submissions of stories and experiences can be uploaded to their website and shared, and there are also tools and resources to help with the writing process and sharing your story. Friday’s workshop echoes some of these aims, but in the context of group work with individuals.
The afternoon will start by looking at the purposes of small group work, and outlining hopes for the day. Following this, the group will look more closely at ‘What’s in a Name?’, led by Donald. John will then explore ‘Surviving and Thriving’ as a context for group work, followed by a small group discussion on participants’ hopes for the session.
The next focus will be on storymaking, with ‘The Hero’s Journey and You’ as a focus for activity, led by Donald. After a break for teas and coffees, attention will turn to how best to go about remembering key moments in recovery and group work settings, followed by looking at approaches to encouraging responses in group work facilitation contexts.
Finally, input will be encouraged on any of the issues arising from the workshop and relevant contexts for further work. The next workshop in the series, Working Creatively with Small Groups 2: Prompts to Memory will look specifically at the role of the senses and objects in prompting memory and shared experience on Friday 2 December.
Fri 7 Oct, 2pm (2hrs 30)
