Perspectives Workshops: Transforming Violence through Mindful Artmaking

This workshop series integrates trauma-informed mindfulness exercises with trauma-informed art-making activities to support recovery and resilience in the wake of traumatic exposure. Workshops are designed to offer to both survivors and providers greater familiarity with the ways in which creative engagement can support the recovery and resiliency of those who have suffered and/or live at risk of exposure to violence. They are designed, too, to support providers and others who work with trauma survivors in order to enhance their practice, mobilize their own resilience and reduce their risk of secondary traumatization.

Theoretical Rationale for the Perspectives Workshops:
Research tells us that traumatic events and their devastating consequences are of such proportion in our society that they constitute a great public health challenge. In addition to specific event-related symptoms (e.g. fears, nightmares, startle responses and flashbacks), other insidious psychological effects may go unrecognized and result in what victims experience as inexplicable and incomprehensible anxiety, anger, and grief. Recovery from these effects of traumatic exposure can be fostered by the use of both verbal and non-verbal approaches to care that is conducted in safe and supportive group contexts.

The Workshops:
The Violence Transformed “Perspective” workshops serve as a means to help victims and those who provide services to them reconnect with their resilient capabilities within a group context via engagement in primarily non-verbal mindfulness and self-expressive art-making activities. The model builds upon the work of a 2015 Arnold P. Gold Foundation “Humanism in Medicine” Award to Violence Transformed in support of a series of artist-led workshops for healthcare providers.

Therapeutic Goals & Benefits of the Perspectives model:

• To promote resilient coping among trauma survivors, providers and those at risk
• To foster affect management and regulation through imaginative engagement
• To provide a safe relational ecological context for developing new coping and self-care skills
• To encourage personal exploration and experimentation
• To share these experiences with both survivors and providers in an atmosphere of mutual respect and engagement toward the common goal of enhancing clinical care and advocacy for victims and survivors of violence.

Workshop Leaders:
The workshops are led by Drs. Mary Harvey, Ph.D. (Director of Violence Transformed) and Barbara Hamm, Psy.D., who are both former directors of the Victims of Violence Program at the Cambridge Health Alliance and co-creators of the "Perspectives" model. Each brings years of clinical and clinical training experience on behalf of trauma survivors to this project. The “Perspectives” model integrates skills and insights developed over their many years of community work with traumatized individuals and communities and with a national and international array of organizations, training venues and professional groups.

Workshop Series Facilitator and Documentarian:
Gloretta Baynes, AAMARP (African-American Master Artists is Residence Program, Northeastern University)

Post-Workshop Community Reception & Dialogue:
Northeastern Crossing, 1175 Tremont Street, Roxbury, MA
June 8, 2017, 6-8 PM

A convening of the workshop leaders, facilitators, community artists and workshop participants from the organizations listed above addressed the role of art-making and mindfulness in confronting the impact of interpersonal and community violence. This concluding Perspectives event was designed to bring individuals' experiences of the workshop series into a collective sphere of sharing and dialogue.