Lead Facilitator: Mae Early
When we enter any space, we navigate, relate, and respond to what’s happening based on the sum of our previous experiences and the full of our identity and beliefs. As theatre artists and educators, understanding how and why our brains intake information and react reflexively can help us better understand the stressors and triggers that may arise when students are performing challenging material, rehearsing high-stakes relational moments, or even exploring a new method of performance or skill. In this workshop, we will examine how our brain is built to ensure our survival, how our stress response can impact our brain’s ability to learn and create, how this influences our basic needs and our ability to relate to others, and how our stress response impacts our bodies. Then, we will explore practices that can help students and ourselves regulate and process these stressors in the moment they occur, as well as broadly over time through consistent self-care.
Invitation and Agency in Writing Spaces: A Healing-Centered Approach
Lead Facilitator: Mae Early
When it comes to writing, every student will have needs, express interests, and encounter challenges that are individualized and often connected to past experiences. Together, we will examine how research from the behavioral health community about basic needs, belief systems, and shame can provide a window into how stress, fear, and anxiety can enter into the writing process. Then, through a blend of tools, free-writes, and discussion, we will create a student-centered, trauma-sensitive approach which considers questions such as: how we invite students to engage with writing, how we can offer greater student agency when we ask students to share their writing with others, and how we build a supportive, affirming environment during feedback and reflective practices.
The Art of Critique
Lead Facilitator: Candy Gonzalez
For generations, group art critiques have been regarded as a formative learning experience for art school students. How a critique is structured or how a critique is facilitated varies greatly from school to school, classroom to classroom. With such little training available for educators to learn how to facilitate a positive and transformative critique experience, it is common for students to have negative experiences in critique spaces. In this session, participants will develop an understanding of trauma and shame, how it shows up in critique spaces and how to use trauma-informed care to facilitate group art critiques. Participants will learn about active listening and giving supportive feedback.