An Expressive Arts and Social Change Workshop

Inde-Script-Able Places: Living Creatively in between Cultures and Conflicts on Thursday, March 6, 2008, 6 to 9:30 p.m.

How now shall we live in this world where borders are disintegrating and cultures are colliding? This expressive arts workshop will explore how we can collectively re-frame local and global conflicts through an imaginative and engaged response. We will dive into the silent, hidden, challenging and "inde-script-able" spaces in between cultures and within conflicts that call for our undivided attention and embodied presence. Movement, music, art-making, poetic narrative and performance will become our shared social canvas for cultivating awareness, compassion and action. Through a variety of artistic encounters in the "gaps," we will collaboratively write new scripts for some of the most neglected personal, social and political spaces
in our world today. This will involve a dynamic exploration of how diverse worldviews, cultural identities and power structures influence conflict transformation both locally and globally. Join us for this innovative interplay with arts and social change as we invent, improvise and imagine how we can re-write current headlines and "in-habit" fragile spaces with sensitivity, dignity and creativity.

There also will be an information session after the workshop on the Expressive Arts and Social Change Program at the European Graduate School in Switzerland (www.expressiveartsandsocialchange.org)

Facilitator: Carrie MacLeod, Ph.D. candidate. Carrie has used an arts-based approach to education, advocacy and social change for over a decade. Internationally, she has worked within the context of peace and reconciliation programs with children impacted by war in Sierra Leone, West Africa; she also has worked on community health, education and environmental projects throughout India and Central America. In Canada, she designs and facilitates programs that combine the arts, film and multimedia with intercultural conflict resolution and global responsibility. She is on the faculty of the European Graduate School in Switzerland, and currently is the creative director of an arts and conflict resolution project at the University of British Columbia.

Location: NYEA Studio, 4 Central Ave., 2nd floor, Albany (just west of the corner at Lark St.)
Fee: $25.00 (all proceeds benefit CAUSE Sierra Leone)
For more information: Visit the NYEA website or call (518) 434-2412.