|
News from the Biography and Social Art Program
The fifth cycle of the Biography and Social Art Program was scheduled to begin in March 2010. We have postponed the start date to July 2010 because of important changes in the format of the program. Many people interested in the program are unable to be away from work and/or family life for three different blocks in the year. Therefore we are re-arranging the twelve-week program so that each year will consist of three weeks in July and one week in January. The winter block will be scheduled for Thursday through Monday, around the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. The program itself will remain essentially the same in terms of the basic subject areas and will still take place over three years. We hope the new design will make it possible for more people to become involved in this work.
The fourth cycle of the program finished in October 2009 with the presentation of inspiring individual projects by the students. At the conclusion of the course we all reflected on this new Biography and Social Art work we are trying to develop. We are asked so often: “what is the work actually?” Here are just a few phrases from the group's efforts to answer this question:
- learning gradually to trust process and time and growth
- standing upright in the world
- creating and holding a sacred space, where individuals can share, grow, develop, and learn to really listen and to speak
- group involvement to explore, come up against, and find the 'highest' within the self, the other, and the group
- connection, inclusion, past, present and future
- bringing people together, and out into nature, and into a world of color and form
- an encounter with deep ideas on the road of human becoming
- a mode of opening windows into humanity, mythology, the human spirit, the cosmos, a leaf, a pool, a stone
What we know more practically is that our graduates are bringing the work alive in many different settings: adult workshops and classes, nursing, counseling, eldercare, work with the dying and those dealing with loss, social work, art therapy, courses in prisons and in homeless shelters, life coaching, community development, parent support -- and the list goes on. This spring we will have a meeting with participants from past cycles of the program to explore together how the work can develop further. This will be the first such meeting in North America, although there have been international conferences for many years where biography practitioners from all over the world share their work and their questions in evolving this new profession.
In closing, we would like to share some good news with you. Toward the end of 2009 the Biography and Social Art program received two kinds of official certification. The New York State Bureau of Proprietary Schools Supervision has certified the program to offer professional development training; and on a deeper level, the program is now also recognized by the International Biography Trainers’ Forum, on behalf of the General Anthroposophical Section of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.
If you would like a program brochure and application, please contact Anna Claire Novotny at Sunbridge anovotny@sunbridge.edu. To speak with a program director contact Signe Schaefer sschaefer@sunbridge.edu or Patricia Rubano patrubano@hotmail.com.
If you are planning to apply for the program, we urge you not to delay. The course dates for this summer are July 5-23. As Program Directors, we welcome your interest very much,
Signe Schaefer and Patricia Rubano
|
Print this page
Email to a friend