Creative Workshops 2010
Jan/Feb Writing Newsletter
Re-story and re-imagine your Life and Work
The creation of something new
is not accomplished by the intellect
but by the
play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative
mind plays with
the objects it loves. (Carl Jung)
Dear
writer, storyteller, reader, lover of words, images, silences…
Among images in a collage created for the coming year, I chose a picture
of a boy hanging onto a rope, Fist over fist, he grabs the plaited line, ankles
crossed and locked. Shoelaces dangle
like roots. His eyes and mouth open to
an 0 as his face rings his surprise tinged with awe and alarm. For the rope
reaches upwards to a tower where a cast bronze bell curls crazy in a semi
circle, swinging him, playing him. This carillon ringer has become a tongue in a
pealing bell, a pendulum of the gods who ring out his playing days.
In the 1930’s Johann Huizinger wrote a book Home Ludens (man the player.) Jung too spoke of our need for serious
play. He often played in scale, on his knees outside his tower, constructing
bridges, moats, streams in miniature. So
may our year be playful … allowing ourselves to be played with… picture how the bell swings us off our feet as we hang on to the great pealing
and clapping in the sky.
And here’s to word –play… through rhythm, rhyme, echo, metaphor, ambiguities
and the maligned pun.
So this quarter a new offering. - a playshop inspired
by Beyond Love and Work, why adults need to play Lenore Terr, a UCLA psychiatrist who writes “ I guess I must admit it
- I go to work to play.” (see 5 below)
Dorian’s Jan/Feb Storyshops/
Writeshops/Conversations
If you want
any of these workshop in your area speak speak.
….To respond to two oft asked questions –
No workshop is ever the same even if the looks as if it is. No one jumps
into the same river twice. As David
Wagoner writes: “No two trees
are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren.”
And for those who feel they might be ‘put on the spot’, I invite people
to read their writing only if they wish to. You may share in pairs or work in silence if that is your choice.
contact Robert McKee
1. Somerset West
Waking up to the New Year A
Collage and Writing Storyshop R395
Sun 31 Jan 2010 09.30 -
15.30
I said to the
man who stood at the gates of the year “Give me a light that I might step
safely into the unknown.”
A collage is a kind of lamp that sheds
light along our path. It evokes as traveling companions, our creativity and
imagination. In this workshop we search
for images to accompany us through the changes we will meet as we travel
through the year.
We will construct a collage and write
about it. Through this ritual of beginnings, we
set intension, possibility and
evoke courage. This work draws from the deep well of the unconscious.
Bring writing materials, old magazines, scissors, a glue stick and
a light lunch to share.
Venue: Katherine Ambrose’s art studio
2.
The Joy
and Call of Stories Find the Story
teller inside R980.00
A practical 4 week Storyshop
Series to evoke Creativity and Imagination
Sat 6 13 20 27 Feb 13:00 - 17:30
Kirsten Pearson joins as co-facilitator
This workshop
will show you how to ritualise and energise your life though engaging with
stories – those of your own and of others. Climb inside stories and tell them
from the inside. Listen to them, Shape them. Taste them on your tongue.
Reconnect to creativity, memory and imagination. This workshop experience will
energize you. You will get a clearer understanding of how
we construct our lives as fiction and how this can release us into a more
abundant life. You’ll emerge with stories in your heart and on your lips.
Week 1: The Why of Stories - Archetypal Stories
Week 2: Sourcing Stories through observation - Structure your own Stories
Week 3: Practical: telling Stories
Week 4: The Circle and the Fire - A celebration of Story telling
Kirsten is a Dialogue facilitator, poet and the volunteer Project
Lead for the Movement for Sharing Life Stories. She promotes story
telling as a way to support change, create new realities and transform the
potential of our future.
Venue: Mystic Cove Holistic Lifestyle Centre
contact Kirsten on 021 461 3145 or email: kirstenpea@gmail.com
Stories are the creative conversion of life
itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the
currency of human
3.
The Great Metaphor Hunt : A Seven Session Writing Course R580
begins Wed 27 Jan (6.15 - 8.45 pm) and then last
Wed of every month till 28 July
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where
there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish. (Bernard Malamud)
Metaphors are everywhere, open to the
eyes and ears that seek them. This hunt (rich in story, words, images and symbols)
aims to enrich your writing. Develop a
metaphoric consciousness though reading, writing and story telling.
We consider how attention to this
mytho-poetic world:
·
moves us from stuckness
·
restores our innate creativity and imagination
·
connects us to the unconscious and an enlarging process and
·
activates emotional and physical healing
·
releases energy and creates
a more abundant life
Add R10 per session to share a light supper.
4. Ixopo
The Halo & the Noose: The Power of Story Telling/Story Listening in Professional/
Personal Life (with Graham Williams)
19-21 Feb bookings
brcixopo@futurenet.co.za 039 834 1863
Why stories? Because stories are origins and
origins are places that we walk out from. Because stories have many feet and
travel several roads at once… because the story conjures the invisible.
At the heart
of this retreat is our belief that once we raise our Story IQ, we begin to hear
and tell our work and personal life in a new and vital way. We open up to
transformation and new leadership paths. Like the lotus flower, we bloom and
seed new beginnings. We reach into what may be murky depths and produce
something of infinite beauty and worth. In so doing, prosperity and abundance
take on new meanings. The retreat title is taken from Graham and Dorian’s book.
5.
Let us Play: A Writing Playshop
Sun 28 Feb 10.-00 -16.00 R395
I sit
and play with similes (Shelley)
This write and play shop explores how
writing as structured play, helps us create texts that sing with vitality,
inspiration and energy. As Jung reminds us. “ The creative mind plays
with the objects it loves”) We
play in scale as we did as children and offer that energy to our texts.
The idea of writing as a game invites
us to be present and engage for a specific period of time. Both our left and
right brains are activated. We consider
how play calls forth inspiration and creativity, angles a subject, and then we
play with the techniques - rhythm,
rhyme, echo, metaphor, ambiguity and word play. And as we entertain ourselves,
so we surprise ourselves.
Venue TBA
Ongoing activities
Speaking Engagements
Be still when you have nothing to say
but when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it
hot."( D. H. Lawrence) I’m
building up this aspect of my work.
Development Work
During 2010 I will be again be working
alongside Dr Laura Campbell of the HSRC and Robs (Bereavement NGO) in Pmb
facilitating training of home-based
caregivers and grannies - - through stories
and creative play - who care for children who are dying
Bosman
and Nasrudin under starlight (repeat info)
This summer season I will be a story-ing for groups of friends…an
evening, wine, cheese, breads and tales for the telling. An ideal way of
spending quality time with friends.. Any
rhyme or reason – birthdays, TV fatigue, the art of conversation. Gather a
group for Summer.
Mentoring – one-on-one (repeat info)
“You make me sound like myself” (various clients.) Walk with me in words.
You put on one shoe, I wear the other. Memoirs, mindfulness adventures, work in
the word… genres tumbling out of folk on the one-on-one path. Such a richness
of story here.
5-
Email Courses: Writer’s/ Poet’s Voice Course – one-on–one
tuition (repeat info)
Some folks
respond to structure, assignments… if so, ask and it shall be negotiated. Here
is one possibility: Do you love reading and
writing? This one-on-one apprenticeship aims to take you further up the writing
mountain and offer you a deeper engagement with your craft. This course is
structured in the nature of an ongoing conversation with a few chosen writers
or poets, (ancestral or alive) with me and with yourself. I encourage you to
keep a journal to record your observations and reflections.
Corporate Work
The Halo and the Noose, the Power of
story-telling and story listening in Business Life R195
Want to source a 100 plus stories?
co-written with Graham Williams (Graysonian Press). We run corporate story
workshops based on our book. Roma Howard from Training &
Development Practitioners
Leadership & Team Effectivenes writes:
I was utterly captivated by The Halo and the
Noose, and now regularly recommend it when I am facilitating my Train the
Trainer & Presentation Skills courses. I am also experimenting with
more use of stories in my training, and loving the fresh slant it brings to my
education role (a real "VitB-Injection" after 20 years of doing
what I do !)
For
orders: from the authors or Graysonian Press Inspirational books that
change the world www.graysonian.com 0836101113
new CD out: More Stories: Stories from
Some fifty plus stories to entertain,
tease , stimulate creativity, prompt discussion… … R100 plus postage (cover is
more of an olive green than as it appears below)
Friends at Work and Play (see previous newsletters on my site)
Aneta
Shaw: Creative relaxation in a small
group context
Enhance
personal growth and honour your soul through creative techniques.
Aneta is a clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist, has integrated years of
experience and life in other countries with ancient ways of being in this
world.
Aneta 082 686 8118 or 021 8555415
aneta.shaw@vodamail.co.za
From
Penny Day:
Where
you are is where I will meet you.
May 4th, 5th,
6th
Fr. Richard Rohr, American
theologian, will be conducing a three day workshop- an overview of the spiritual journey, its goals,
its traps, its methods, and its reliance on divine grace. For more information please call Penny Day on
082 77 11 952, or email pjday@iafrica.com Venue: Schoenstatt
Retreat, Constantia,
Here is an extract from one of
Richard Rohr’s books Hope Against Darkness
Imaginal knowing, the only way that
the unconscious can move into consciousness, happens through fantasy through
dreams, through symbols… and through well-told stories. It happens through
poetry… the words that create the image that in turn creates a new awareness -
that is in us already.”
Writer-sites and News (see site
news on my web. see new web address dorianhaarhoff.com The longer old one is
linked to it.
So may 2010 be a playful/payful year
for you
Dorian
PS Thank you to all those who circulate this letter.
Dr Dorian
Haarhoff
021 855 3937 / 082 873 6802/ fax 086 511 4751
http://dorianhaarhoffwriter.homestead.com and dorianhaarhoff.com