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CULTURAL HEALING ARTISTRY Posted 1997. Last Updated Sept,
2014.
Cultural Healing Action has emerged
from Vanuatu and other Pacific Cultures as well from Australian Aboriginal
people. Contexts are set up where people can explore aspects of the own
wellbeing together with others towards enriching wellbeing in family and
community life. Throughout remote areas of Northern
Australia and the East Asia Pacific region, indigenous, small minority, and
intercultural people have a long history of using Cultural Healing Action
towards fostering and maintaining all aspects of wellbeing. This page
provides a brief over view of some of their healing ways. Note this Cultural Healing Action
material is also repeated in the Healing Ways page, where many
of the concepts in this page are described more fully. For
associated links refer to the end of this Page For
News Cultural Healing Action Cultural Healing Action may be used
to sustain and or evolve all forms of wellbeing. It can provide a healing
support to survivors of torture and trauma. An outline of Cultural Healing
Action Every artistic aspect of a culture (a
way of life) may be used for nurturing healing. Examples: music drumming, percussion and
body percussion dance drama and spontaneous
drama chanting play and games clowning aromas circus singing, chanting,
toning, humming and vocalising adventure challenges spontaneous choir theatre visual arts sculpture, carving and
moulding literature creative writing drawing painting poetry group dynamics story-telling Healing Cultural Action in general terms
involves actively fostering and sustaining cultural wellbeing. It fosters
people extending their own culture as a balance to other cultures that may be
dominant, elitist and oppressive. As well, it is a movement for
intercultural reconciling and wellbeing. It fosters the developing of Quick Response Healing Teams to resolve local
community and international conflict. It provides scope for people to
actively engender and promote values, language, practices, modes of action,
arts and other aspects of a way of life (culture). These in turn facilitate
social emancipation, intercultural healing, cultural justice, as well as social and environmental
wellbeing. Cultural Healing Action draws on
influences from Vanuatu and other Islands in the Region, though not simply
applied. Cultural Healing Action may run for
less than an hour to several days (or weeks). People may be involved in
energetic and not so energetic games and activities. Enablers may have a broad concept of
activities and possibilities for the time together. The process may start out
with some structure or context, or a felt need of the participants. After a
time, activities and games may begin to emerge out of the spontaneous
responding of the participants, with action evolving from the energy and
inclination of the moment. In a very real sense, the
participants evolve their own experience together. Enablers may be there as
resource people, though never as directors or gurus. Cultural Healing Action tends to be
'wellbeing' based rather than 'issue' based, although issues may emerge, disappear and be resolved. Contexts may be created allowing
states of wellbeing to emerge. Typically, liminal experiences create fertile contexts with emergent
properties. People begin exploring new ways of
being in the world together and in the process, issues tend to cease to be.
Action may place people into 'desired states' so that prior problematic
behaviours are no longer a concern. To explore 'why' they used to do
something when people have now changed becomes a some-what irrelevant
exercise. Finding who was 'at fault' in prior behaviours is not particularly
ecological or useful. In keeping with the previous
paragraph, action focuses on what is wanted, rather than on what is not
wanted. Often enabler suggestions to explore what is wanted will have people
talking about what they do not want. This may be reframed to being 'exploring
what we do want. The comments of this paragraph may be born in mind when
reading the section below on resolving conflict. The arts and other elements
of culture provide opportunities to reflect on everyday social structures and
practices. A description of some of the games and exercises commonly used
will perhaps present a more concrete idea of the issue-posing and
issue-resolving process that characterise people's Cultural Healing Action. Participants of all ages may explore
creative and artistic ways of examining local cultural wellbeing matters that
concern the participants and their communities. Generative wellbeing acts may
result in many issues ceasing to be. Refer the Daughter on Bail Story. Examples: Generative wellbeing acts such as: being well being flexible assuring habitat assuring food assuring land assuring clean water good housing playful healing ways having choice fun playfulness sharing joy giving recognition, mutual supporting sharing what works increasing flexibility Resolving issues such as: loneliness fatigue boredom purposelessness violence helplessness powerlessness torture trauma grief sexual abuse suicidal ideas corrective healing action
alcohol abuse drug abuse Participants may create short plays,
songs and rhythms, poems, stories, dances, murals and postcards, and other materials
about these things. A strong sense of group and community bonding may develop
or be strengthened. Often others - friends and relatives - may join in
towards the finish of the gatherings to experience performances, games, and
perhaps an exhibition of artistic products. Typically, participants have
rarely, if ever, participated in artistic expression before. To casual observers, people's
Cultural Healing Action may appear to be a curious mix of childlike
activities, where grown-ups, adolescents and children may sing simple songs,
work with crayons, pens, markers, pencils, chalk and coloured paper, and play
games. Some of the processes: Social Mapping. Participants may
explore the function of personal and community maps and their significant features.
They may construct social maps, or maps of their community's or their
individual concerns; detailing points of origin, the destination, the
landmarks and signposts, etc. - using cut-outs, drawings, and found objects.
Joining with others in social mapping may be transformative. The creating of
social maps may focus on producing graphic and directional representations of
individual and community wellbeing aspirations, ideal situations, and
possible courses to take. Refer creating futures. Conflict Studies. Conflict may be a
motive force for art - as in life. Recognising this, in some contexts, games
and exercises exploring the various kinds of conflict may make up a
significant portion of the early life of some Cultural Healing Action. The ‘As if’ framing creates
possibilities for hypothetical realplay where
transforming experience may occur. Physical conflict may be explored
through such games as Tug-of-War, Dragons Tail, and various group tag games.
These may illustrate the tension that may evolve if force is used,
particularly to oppose. The value of unified action, cooperative teamwork and
therapeutic mediating ways in conflict resolving
situations may be highlighted. Contexts may be rich with possibilities to
incorporate / embody any of the healing ways you know and those included in
this page. Jog-Freeze is a verbal conflict
experience - participants jog in a circle and when two or three people are
tagged, the jogging stops. Then the tagged people come into the centre of the
circle and have an improvised healing mediation and seek to understand each
other's maps. These little segments are then discussed to explore factors that
sustain and resolve conflicts. Hidden disagreement may be explored
by assigning subtexts (for example, undisclosed agendas, attitudes, motives
and outlooks) to participants, then having them interact showing only a
'superficial character' embodying a totally different subtext to the world.
As an example a person may have an open subtext of 'Act strong because life
is a jungle and it is the survival of the fittest'. This may be linked with a
hidden one of 'Do not trust anyone - people only use you up'. Participants
eventually try to discover each others' subtexts as part of their differing
maps as a source of obvious, but implicit conflict among themselves. As stated above, Cultural Healing
Action is wellbeing focused. Exploring conflict may have the tendency for
people to start entering into 'conflict' based states - blaming,
faultfinding, justifying, scapegoating and the like - even starting conflict!
Given this, sometimes enablers may 'bypass' conflict and set up and structure
contexts and processes having rich possibilities for cooperative and conflict
resolving action. Participants may so immerse themselves in cooperative
relation building acts that conflict just ceases to be an issue. These
processes provide rich opportunities to use many of the skills contained in
this page and other Laceweb pages. Refer Healing Ways. Image
Theatre and Forum Theatre The conflict resolving exercises may
naturally progress to image theatre, a basic device used in enriching
wellbeing for issue dissolving. Participants often divide into groups of at
least five, and each group devises three tableaux (frozen postures,
attitudes, images and dialogue) depicting: the present state,
concern or conflict situation the transition phases -
the dynamics of change evolving the desired, ideal or
resolved state Forum theatre builds from image
theatre. The situations presented in the group in stages can now be developed
into a more fluid dramatic piece, complete with movement, sound, etc. The
participants (still divided into groups) develop the piece either completely
(i.e. an aspect of wellbeing is enriched - a concern is resolved) or up to a
crisis point only. Pieces are then performed with others as observers.
Members of this audience stop the performance any time a person has concerns
about what is being presented. During the replay, people stopping the
performance do not to talk about why they want to change something. Rather
they assume the role of the actor concerned or simply add another actor in
the drama. The process can go on until the audience agrees that the
performance offers a rich representation of the wellbeing enriching process. If the performance is one that stops
at a crisis point, the audience supplies a resolution to the crisis. As many
actors again from the audience may rise to modify the piece. At the very end
of these processes, a forum may be held with everybody present involved to
further explore the presentations. Forum theatre thus becomes a process for
dismantling the alienation between actors and audience typical of formal
theatre. It also may serve as a rehearsal for action in the real conflict
situations represented in the pieces. The healing cultural activities and
dynamic 'group relating' may provide corrective, remedial and generative
emotional experiences that may lead to personal and group concerns actually
being healed/resolved during the process of exploring them. At the same time
participants may be gaining competencies that they may use in the future. Cultural healing action may enable
healing potential within therapeutic space. It may create opportunities for
exploring inner experience and outer reality - exploring the space between
'appears to be real' and 'experientially real', i.e. what is felt somatically
(in the body) - enriching the capacity of 'individual self' and the
'collective self' - as healer/actor in experiencing 'safe abandon' -
surrendering to the unfolding moment and catching the flow - re-experiencing
early childhood pre-play processes of embodiment, projecting and role,
dramatic play - exploring within the 'personal theatre' of the individual and
community and creating the healing theatre of the group as a whole. The above
processes may be used to enrich wellbeing while gaining the requisite skills
in the process. Healing Cultural Action involves
actively fostering and sustaining cultural wellbeing. It fosters people
extending their own culture as a balance to other cultures that may be
dominant, elitist and oppressive. As well, it is a movement for intercultural
reconciliation and wellbeing. It may foster the development of
Quick Response Healing Teams to resolve local community and international
conflict. It may provide scope for people to actively engender and promote
values, language, practices, modes of action, arts and other aspects of a way
of life (culture). These in turn may enable social emancipation,
intercultural healing, cultural justice, as well as social and environmental
wellbeing. News On Cultural Healing Action As Cultural Healing
Action events occur these will be posted on this page. Any new processes will
also be added. Action is evolving
towards the possibility of using the above processes to support survivors of
torture and trauma in Bougainville. For more information on this, refer the
Bougainville link at the bottom of this page. Note this Cultural
Healing Action material is also repeated in the Healing Ways page, where many of the concepts in this page
are described more fully. Healing Ways is an encyclopaedia. Ideas are emerging for holding an
international gathering at the end of this year or early next year in NE
Australia. It may be possible for Cultural Healing Action to be incorporated
into the process of this gathering. For more information on this refer to the
'Small Island' link at the bottom of this page. For associated links refer to the
end of this Page We welcome receiving email
containing brief outlines of Cultural Healing Action processes that work. Why not Bookmark this Homepage now
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