DELVE IN

Delve In facilitated a 4-session workshop series with the participants in the WEAV program at Nellie’s Shelter for Women. These workshops focused on building individual confidence, group trust, and interpersonal skills through the use of improvisational, performance, and movement activities. Participants engaged in body awareness, leadership development and guided self-reflection. Through the use of context specific and sensitive, arts-based practices, Delve In brought humour and support to participants as they engaged in self-reflection and explored relational group dynamics.

Delve In worked with both the Executive Director and the Manager of Settlement Services of WWCC to develop and define the goals of this workshop – to engage all staff together in a format that would allow them to gain comfort with one another and generate dialogue about their roles in the organization, their professional values, and their goals as a staff team. Delve In facilitated a workshop that involved a variety of creative practices including movement, body mapping, and clay sculpting to explore the needs, challenges, and strengths of the group, successfully meeting the pre-defined goals of the workshop.

Delve In developed and facilitated a workshop for the conference “Making Space for Intimate Citizenship”. This conference brought together academics, self-advocates, and researchers in the field of Disability Studies, to collaborate and brainstorm pathways to social justice. Delve In’s workshop explored the topic of “Loving” and used arts-based practices to discuss and reflect upon ways in which loving is experienced by people labeled intellectually and/or physically disabled.

The Our Cities on Our Stages Symposium was designed to initiate discussion and develop helpful practices around inclusiveness and diversity in the North American, theatrical improvisation community. For the past 2 years, Delve in has been invited to participate in the symposium as part of a panel and as a workshop facilitator. The panel on ‘best practices’ was facilitated by professionals engaging with arts-based practices in the context of community service work. Delve In’s workshop session explored effective ways of bringing forward the values provided by the art of improvisation, into theatres and training schools.

Delve In facilitated a workshop for UrbanArts Toronto’s “LOVE” conference. Working with 14-16 year old young women, Delve In explored the theme of showing compassion to ourselves. Through the art of improvisation, Delve In engaged participants in activities that focused on enhancing confidence, supporting ourselves, and connecting with others through collaboration and compassion.

Delve In collaborated as a consultant on a project that uses arts-informed theatre workshop techniques to enhance accessibility for people labeled developmentally and/or intellectually disabled. This project specifically explored the experiences of parents and expectant parents who are frequently deemed incapable of informing and commenting upon the decisions that shape their lives. Delve In’s role involved listening to the voices within the group and the research study, consolidating many differing artistic approaches to their already-in-motion project, and drawing forward and highlighting creative practices and pieces of the project that were either helpful or posing challenges.

Delve In collaborated with professors to develop a workshop for their PhD Social Work Research courses. This workshop addressed several themes salient to student researchers; identity and motivation as a researcher; relationship with research participants; awareness of drive and intentions; how research narratives are shaped; how discourse shapes participants, ; how the researcher constitutes participants and is constituted by the research process and the participants. Delve In used improvisation to engage participants in their experiences of these themes and their own reflection upon these themes.

Delve In worked with faculty from both McMaster University and the University of Witwatersrand in a conference that explored the intersection of art and Social Work. Delve In facilitated a workshop in which, through the art of improvisation, faculty explored their own understandings of practice, research and education in Social Work. The book “Social Work Artfully: Beyond Borders and Boundaries”, was one of the outcomes of this conference with Delve In’s work described in detail in one of the chapters.

Delve In facilitated a workshop for Social Work students learning improvisation. This workshop focused on using the skills that they had developed in their artistic training, to help them navigate their Social Work practice education.