Slow Art, Somatic Practice, and Creative Rest
With Shauna Kaendo, Registered Art Therapist | BFA, RCAT and Trudi Smith, Registered Clinical Counsellor | MC, MA, PhD
July 11 - 16, 2025
Bringing our bodies into the conversation through creative process.
In this therapeutic arts program, we get curious about what self-care practices can look and feel like both individually and in community. Through creative meanderings we will experiment with solo and collaborative art-making processes such as, bilateral drawing, collage, watercolour, bookmaking, slow stitch, and somatic felting.
We will be grounded in somatic, sensory and mindfulness practices that invite participants to connect with and explore their intrinsic creativity. What does it feel like to notice that we are in a body in creative flow?
Through a series of art prompts, we will explore using various materials, in different way—to see what they can do, how they behave and intersect with each other—And to notice how we feel in the different processes. How does the abundance of art process become shared collective fodder for new inspiration?
This program will balance collective and solo indoor and outdoor studio practices and meanderings.
Program Highlights
- Experience in sensory arts and material explorations (felt, stone, wood, paper, twig, pigment, expressive mark making, brush making, slow stitch, bookmaking, movement).
- Develop and deepen creative self care practice through materials and making.
- Explore the connection between expressive and therapeutic arts practices and mental and physical health. Conversations and learning are supported by contemporary neuroscientific research.
- Revisit, redefine and re-imagine what self-care means…what (and who) it includes.
Daily Schedule
A detailed schedule will be emailed to you about 30 days prior to your program. Click here to view a sample program schedule.
About the Presenters
Shauna Kaendo, Registered Art Therapist | BFA, RCAT
Shauna Kaendo's art and clinical work is rooted in creative process, and supporting folks in building creative care practices... that we repeat. Learning (and practicing) how to play in our art-making, how to think less about what we’re making, and FEEL more. Learning to practice creative curiosity ...a curiosity that we can feel and carry […]
Learn more about Shauna Kaendo, Registered Art Therapist | BFA, RCATTrudi Smith, Registered Clinical Counsellor | MC, MA, PhD
Trudi Smith brings over 25 years of experience with experimental arts-based collaborations focusing on flourishing within human and more than human communities. Trudi works as a clinical counsellor, artist and cultural anthropologist and teaches ecological arts as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. In recent writing, […]
Learn more about Trudi Smith, Registered Clinical Counsellor | MC, MA, PhDCategories : Cortes Island, Creative Expression, Mind & Body, Mindfulness