Justice-Doing in Therapeutic Work & Witnessing Resistance to “Trauma” & Oppression
Friday, October 6, 2017, 9 AM – 4:30 PM Central
Presenting Live from Vancouver, Canada to
Parkdale Plaza Conference Room
1660 Highway 100
First Floor
St. Louis Park, MN
In this experiential workshop, Vikki invites a critique of the tenuous, strained, yet hopeful relationship between social justice activism and community work & therapy. We will address the tensions of community work replicating oppressive practices, and invite a critique of our practice with an aim to move us more in line with our collective ethics for justice-doing. We will explore the theories and practices of “Leaning In” as imperfect allies and responding accountably to the impact of power and privilege when working in communities with people experiencing poverty, violence, and oppression. We will engage in a Solidarity group practice together, and critique the theory from within the practice, looking to see if our collective ethics are enacted in our work together.
Workshops with Third Way Theatre in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Addressing Injustices / The politics of community work
This workshop invites CEO’s, Team Leaders, front-line workers and interested others to explore how we can work for social justice in ways that resist contexts, language, and practices that perpetuate the very conditions we seek to overturn. In coming together, we will be invited to critically reflect on the connections and paradoxes between community work practice and the concept of social justice doing. Social justice-doing offers a way to center ethics, and support solidarity, in order to (enable our ability to) collectively sustain our work, reconnect with hope, and better respond to the conditions that sustain injustices.
June 8 – 12:15 till 4:45
Our roles as (imperfect) allies in social justice work
This introductory workshop focuses on what it means for us to be an ally to LGBTI folk, racialized others, sex workers, injecting drug users, those who experience ableism, gender, and other forms of violence, in a system that has “not yet delivered on justice”. We will focus on learnings from progressive thinkers, reflect, analyses and consider our roles as allies. Asking ourselves questions in relation to power and privilege, cultures of backlash and how we sustain our responses to the conditions that create injustices.
June 9 – 8:45 am start – finish 1:30pm
Making Visible the Politics of our Work – Creating practices to address injustices
Vikki Reynolds will be joining us for a two-day workshop aimed at identifying and addressing the effects of unexamined privilege and practice in our work against injustice. By engaging with a critique of the potential for social and environmental harm within popular methods and mindsets, we’ll work to develop a praxis that encourages justice both within our workplaces and throughout our lives.
As a guide, here are the areas of focus for each of the two days:
Day 1. Uncovering the Discourse of Suffering
- Critiquing the language informing mental health practices to move beyond the focus on “symptoms” and “pathology”
- Exploring and resisting the role of “trauma” and the medicalisation of suffering in suppressing the visibility of violence
- Revealing and responding to the conditions that sustain oppression, marginalisation, and isolation within our broader community
- Introducing conversations around and commitments to addressing power and privilege in our workplaces
Day 2. The Spirit of Solidarity
- Examining the spirit of social justice work and the place of spiritual pain in guiding our decisions
- Establishing an ethical foundation for creating justice and reckoning with power, while learning from times of ethical uncertainty
- Evolving away from a consumer-product relationship by transforming structures of hierarchy and competition to be more inclusive of all members of community
- Building solidarity and collective commitments to justice in our community
- An opportunity to participate in a solidarity group, reviewing the moral basis and underlying practices
June 1 & 2 2017 (with the option to attend day 1 only)
Abbotsford Convent
1 St Heliers Street
Abbotsford
Victoria. Australia
To Register: https://www.trybooking.com/PIXN
Resisting Burnout with Justice-Doing
1 Day Workshop for Foundation House Staff
This invigorating and powerful workshop for Foundation House staff off ers an alternative approach to the notion of worker burnout. Those working with people struggling with poverty, violence and oppression are often told that they will “burn out”. Contrary to this is the story of sustainability; how our collective work sustains us, nourishes our hope, invites us to honour the resistance and strength we witness in the people we work alongside, and allows us to work congruently with our ethics. This experiential workshop will address our collective ethics and practices of Collective Care as opposed to self-care. Workers will be invited to begin to build their own “Solidarity Team”; examining who stands alongside them, what ideas and practices sustain them, and how they might access support when burnout attacks.
May 31, 2017 – Melbourne Australia
Dignity International Conference
Keynote Address
22-24 May, 2017
Esplanade Hotel,
Fremantle, Western Australia.
Workshops with the Family Worker Training Development Programme
New South Wales, Australia
Looking at the Darkness in Our Work: Understanding Our Responses to Loss and Hardships from a Place of Dignity and Hope
May 17 @ 8:45 am – 4:00 pm
Community workers “show up and do the hard stuff” every day. In this experiential workshop, Vikki will explore how we respond to the hardships and loss within our work. We will strategise responses that support the worker and our clients, while honouring our humanity and fostering cultures of hope
Trauma and Resistance: Witnessing Social Injustice
May 18 @ 8:45 am – 4:00 pm
Acts of Resistance present in many different forms. In this experiential workshop, Vikki will challenge us to honour the people who we work with in their responses to violence and oppression. She will present a de-colonising, anti-oppressive perspective and create a ‘witnessing culture’, a collective approach of solidarity in our work with trauma. This alternative way of working, prioritises safety, agency and cultures of vicarious resistance.
Violence and Resistance: Working Together to Transform the Culture of Violence and Rape
May 19 @ 8:45 am – 4:00 pm
Feminism is for everyone. In this experiential workshop, Vikki will address our collective work to resist and transform the culture of rape and violence. What are the structural oppression’s that create the conditions for ongoing oppression? And what creative responses can be considered to those who are victimised by assault, and to those who commit assaults? This insightful workshop will address these questions and more.
Empowering Partnerships: Enhancing Coordinated Responses to Sexual Abuse and Assault
Conference May 1 and 2 , 2017
Nelson, BC
Keynote Address: Resisting Rape Culture
In this talk Vikki will address our collective work to resist and transform Rape Culture. We will address the structural oppressions that create the conditions for this on going oppression, and consider creative responses to both the people who are victimized by assault, and the people who commit these assaults. This work is informed by bell hooks’ ideas that “feminism is for everybody” and will address how patriarchy is complex and doesn’t serve many men, especially those in marginalized locations, as well as women and gender variant people. We will discuss ethical stances for this work that hold the people who have suffered assault at the centre, alongside a call to account, responsibility and compassionate response to people who enact violence.
Workshop: Resisting Burnout with Justice-doing
In this experiential workshop Vikki offers an alternative approach to the notion of worker burnout. Those working with people struggling with poverty, violence and oppression are often told that they will “burn out”. Contrary to this is the story of sustainability; how our collective work sustains us, nourishes our hope, invites us to honour the resistance and strength we witness in the people we work alongside, and allows us to work congruently with our ethics. This experiential workshop will address our collective ethics and practices of Collective Care as opposed to self care. Workers will be invited to begin to build their own “Solidarity Team”; examining who stands alongside them, what ideas and practices sustain them, and how they might access support when burnout attacks
Presents:
Transformative, accountable and liberatory masculinities
A dialogue of intersections, tensions and difference in therapeutic conversation.
Sacha Médiné, Stefan de Villiers and Steve Barker will address their theory and practice working alongside men and masculine identified people. The multiple locations of these therapists invite diverse practices and responses to the influences of problematic masculinities; each aims to discern accountable and liberatory masculinities from patriarchy. Challenging dominant, hegemonic and hetero-cisnormative masculinities, this dialogue will offer some hope-filled resistance to abuses of power and domination. Our aim is to create space for liberatory transformations for both the men and masculine identified people we work alongside, and communities, with an aim to transform our social context.
This dialogue is facilitated by Vikki, who serves as the presenters’ therapeutic supervisor.
Friday Apr 28 2-4:30 pm
City University of Seattle,
Vancouver, BC
789 West Pender St, 3rd floor
Limited space available.
Pre-registration required through Eventbrite.
$25 admission
Managers Training Day:
Responding to the opiate epidemic: Sustainability & Shouldering each other up
April 27, 2017 Vancouver BC
In this experiential workshop we’ll address:
- Organizational cultures of resiliency
- Understandings of “Trauma” and behaviours: intrusion / hyperarousal/ avoidance
- Self regulation and co-regulation
- Resident-centered ways of understanding burnout and vicarious trauma
- Relations of respect and dignity between staff as a resource against burnout
- Responding to death: differentiating tragic death from death as part of life
- A frame for Debriefing and commitments to collective care
- Strategies for sustainability: Resistance, resilience and “Traumatic Growth”
- Connections on the “practice as research” we are creating
Field Instructor Appreciation Day
Join us for our appreciation day as we offer gratitude and thanks for your service to our students and community.
Workshop 1: Centering Ethics in Group Supervision
8:45 – 11:45 am
Arts and Education Building Room AE308
Lunch
12:00 -1:00 pm
International Building Panorama Room
Workshop 2: Resisting Burnout
1:15 – 4:15 pm
Arts and Education Building Room AE308
April 25, 2017 | 9-4
Feel free to join one, two or all three of the free events
RSVP by April 18, 2017 to Michelle at mrutsatz@tru.ca
Turning Burnout Into Collective Care
This invigorating and powerful one day workshop offers an alternative approach to the notion of worker burnout.
Those working with people struggling with addiction, poverty, violence and oppression are often told that they will “burn out”. Contrary to this is a story of sustainability; how our collective work sustains us, nourishes our hope, invites us to honour the resistance and strength we witness in the people we work alongside, and allows us to work congruently with our ethics. This experiential workshop will address our collective ethics and practices of collective care as opposed to self-care.
April 21, 2017 8:30 to 4:30
3741 Holland Ave. Cobble Hill, BC
This workshop is a full day, on site, complimentary training event for Cedars Staff and Continuing Care Providers. Lunch will be provided.
Email lisas@cedarscobblehill.com to RSVP no later than Friday, April 7th, 2017.
Mount Pleasant – Cedar Cottage CAPC coalition
Care For the Caregiver
This invigorating and powerful workshop offers an alternative approach to the notion of worker burnout. Those working with people struggling with poverty, violence and oppression are often told that they will “burn out”. Contrary to this is the story of sustainability; how our collective work sustains us, nourishes our hope, invites us to honour the resistance and strength we witness in the people we work alongside, and allows us to work congruently with our ethics. This experiential workshop will address our collective ethics and practices of Collective Care as opposed to self-care. Workers will be invited to begin to build their own “Solidarity Team”; examining who stands alongside them, what ideas and practices sustain them, and how they might access support when burnout attacks.
March 31 1PM to 4PM
ISS of BC
2610 Victoria Drive
Vancouver
Sustainability and Solidarity in the Social Justice Movement
Vancouver Workshop – March 27, 2017
Team Day March 23
Taking on oppression on all fronts: Feminism & Justice-Doing
In this training, we’ll address ATIRA’s commitments to keeping women at the heart of our work. We will look at our collective accountability to work in anti-oppressive ways, and to “walk our talk”. Vikki will address our collective commitments to feminism and justice-doing while working in contexts of oppression and suffering, and weave our collective resistance to structural oppression together with social movements and feminist informed workers who are taking on oppression on all fronts. We will acknowledge the darkness of mean and hate-filled politics, rape culture that occurs within a wider context of violence, and the suffering of “messed with human beings” alongside luminous stories of everyday resistance with threads from community work and social movements, and the” immeasurable outcomes” of our work alongside women struggling to keep a finger hold on dignity.
2017 Women’s Services Gathering and Dialogue
Keynote Address
March 10, 2017
Vikki Reynolds PhD RCC 