Becoming Mother Trees: A Jungian arts-based approach to group work and inquiry
Do you run groups?
Are you interested in learning new imaginative and creative facilitation practices?
Do you want to deepen your understanding of unconscious group dynamics?
Are you interested in learning about collaborative arts-based approaches?
When, what time and how much?
5 Tuesdays: February 4th 12th 18th and 25th, with a final follow up session on March 25th.
6.00 pm to 8.30 pm
Cost**: £150.00
Who is it for?
This online 5-session programme is aimed at group facilitators, coaches, team leaders, therapists and researchers who are interested in the application of depth psychology to groups. Collaborative imaginative engagement is a new Jungian arts-based approach to group work and inquiry developed from four years of doctoral research and over 30 years’ experience in running groups. This highly participative, experiential process will include storytelling, making and working with images, poetry, case studies, peer coaching circles and practice.
What you will learn:
- Ways to facilitate personal and collective transformation in groups
- Why a group leader needs to embark on their own transformation journey
- Ways to utilise emotions to understand and navigate group dynamics
- How to make visible unconscious processes through image work
- Ways to nurture interconnection through creative collaboration
Approach to group work
Working with the symbol of a Mother Tree in a forest, we will overturn current notions of group leadership which follow individualistic images of hero, prophet or guru replacing them with an ecological counterpoint. The Mother Tree is the oldest and biggest tree in a forest, and my metaphor for the group leader’s role in fostering interconnectivity and mutuality through collective creativity.
The forest is an enchanted place in myths and fairy tales around the world. Forests can be shadowy, dangerous places but also places of magic and transformation – very much like groups. Walking in a forest is to discover trees living in a web of interdependence – a potent symbol for how we grow and become who we are in groups.
Trees in a forest are connected via a fungal underground network – a ‘wood wide web’ of tree-to-tree to communication. This programme reimagines this mycelium network, through the lens of Jungian psychology, as the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the forest floor where we can access the group’s wisdom through imaginative and creative practice.
Why attend?
We are navigating immense global challenges and living in a fragmented, polarised, and divided world. Group work can be an imaginative playground for experimenting with generative (rather than destructive) ways of being in relationship with self, other and the planet. This programme will support us in finding ‘hope in the dark’, working towards a new paradigm of interconnectivity.
About Dr. Louise Austin
Dr. Louise Austin is a depth psychologist, group facilitator, course leader, senior lecturer and art-based researcher with a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies and an MA in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy. She has over 30 years of experience in researching, designing, and facilitating personal, group and professional development programmes within higher education, organisations, and the community. Currently, she is training group facilitator for the Association of Jungian Analysts and senior lecturer/former course leader at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education. She is also honorary fellow at the University of Essex and a senior practitioner for Artgym an award-winning change consultancy. She has researched, co-designed, and led the first ever accredited one-year diploma in Creative Collaboration, delivered in the UK and Shanghai. Stemming from her doctoral research, Dr. Austin has developed a new collaborative method for arts-based group work, research and reflective practice.
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