HARC Research Managers Facilitate Workshop for RCCBC Staff Retreat

On October 20th, HARC Research Managers, Lisa Striegler and Marion Erickson, facilitated a workshop entitled: All Our Parts: Learning to See Ourselves and the World Around Us with Critical Empathy. Eighteen staff members from the Rural Coordination Centre of BC (RCCBC) joined in this interactive session in which they turned painful body parts into beautiful constellations of colour and healing; they learned Dakelh words for key body parts; they acknowledged unconscious biases and the social and cultural pressures underlying these.

See below for the abstract from this workshop and photos from this wonderful day.

Abstract: The arts can provide a lens through which to see anew both ourselves and the world around us. This revisioning of ourselves and the world around us can, furthermore, allow for more culturally humble practices. The “All Our Parts” workshop began with movement-based learnings, encouraging participants to learn about their bodies in Dakelh language. This was followed by a short story about conflict, followed by blind-contour drawing and the Metis-art informed practice of “dot painting”. Participants focused with care and critical attention on a part of their own body with which they struggled or about which they felt conflict. By “repainting” our challenging body part, and then reflecting on ways we engage our own bodies and the conflicts we have with ourselves and with others, participants were encouraged to think about the ways we judge ourselves and others, particularly ways we might judge that we don’t understand.