Thanks for your interest in our Seriously Optimistic Online News (SOON).
We’ve had a great response,
and look forward to bringing you more news, updates, latest releases, prompts
for creativity and tips for using our resources.
We’d love SOON to become a hub for your stories, ideas, creative ways you’ve used Innovative Resources products, or any other inventive methods you’ve used to create those important conversations and engage people in meaningful ways.
Please send us a message by simply replying to this message.
HOT OFF THE PRESS:
Doorways – Celebrating 25 Years of
St Luke’s
‘This book chronicles a journey which, inevitably, has had it highs
and lows. The vision, however, has always been clear: all people are important;
a compassionate and inclusive society is the goal. St Luke’s (and organisations
like St Luke’s) are critical to any civil society.’
Andrew McCallum
CEO,
St Luke’s Anglicare
Since its inception 25 years ago, St Luke’s has challenged the traditional notion of how a welfare organisation should look and behave.
With the same distinctiveness that has characterised St Luke’s, Doorways tells the stories of staff, volunteers, clients and others who have shared the agency’s journey over 25 years.
Some of the stories are joyous—some are full of pain—but together, the voices in Doorways capture the essense of St Luke’s work within the community, and highlight the courage that has allowed clients and workers to step through doorways that might once have seemed shut tight.
This book invites readers to enter the warts-and-all world of St Luke’s, and grapple with the same question that the agency does on a daily basis: what makes an effective and distinctive welfare organisation?
Doorways – Celebrating 25
Years of St Luke’s (view it
online)
Author: John Holton
Published by Innovative
Resources
Softcover, 120 pages
ISBN: 1 920945 04 0
Cat No. 8006
AUD $10.00
‘Change, when it comes,
cracks everything open.’
Dorothy
Allison
New Release
Signposts – Exploring Everyday
Spirituality
A set of cards for reflecting on our lived experience of soulfulness.
Here is a stunning set of 48 cards, based around original photographs, for building conversations about meaning, spirituality, connectedness and transformation. This tool is not based on a particular religion or philosophy. It explores ways to reflect on our life’s purpose and convert our values into actions. Each card combines a powerful full-colour photograph with a few simple words. Signposts can revitalise our contemplation and create dynamic conversations about matters we hold closest to our hearts.
* Select a card and reflect on an
experience you have had.
* Which cards do you think you do well? Which would
you like to practise more?
* Select three cards that were strengths you drew
on at a challenging time.
* If you could ‘gift’ a quality from
Signposts to a friend, which card would you choose?
* Select a card
and use it as a contemplation or writing theme for the week.
A great tool for group work and individual reflection!
Photography and Design: Brent
Seamer
Concept: Russell Deal
48 laminated, full-colour cards, 140 x 140mm,
28 page booklet
ISBN: 0 9580188 6 3
Cat No. 3450 AUD
$49.50
‘Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.’
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Tools of the Trade
The card packs published by Innovative Resources have as many applications as there are ideas ‘out there’ amongst the creative folk who use them. We have heard stories of their use in classrooms, staff meetings, professional development seminars, prisons, parenting courses and in many different forms of counselling and social work. These uses are not scripted—it is our desire to publish materials that enhance workers’ creativity, curiosity, respect, purpose and passion.
In the booklets that accompany our card sets you will find suggestions and, hopefully, gems of inspiration rather than recipes that must be followed. In upcoming editions of SOON we will share some of the wild and wonderful ideas for using the cards that have arisen out of many creative minds. We encourage you to share your own stories by writing to us at SOON@innovativeresources.org
Here are some of the great ‘learnings’ that people have contributed about using the tools:
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No tool is a panacea. No tool is guaranteed to be always successful.
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All tools (including the words we use) are potentially dangerous and must be used with care.
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To use any tool requires a certain degree of risk and courage.
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Knowing and respecting the culture and learning preferences of the client is an important way to minimise this risk.
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No single metaphor will appeal to everyone.
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Sometimes it can be helpful to talk about why something hasn’t worked (‘therapeutic stuff-ups’) to gain insight into other possibilities for exploration.
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The extent to which the worker is comfortable with and enjoys the tool seems to be a key factor in the successful introduction of the resource.
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The best metaphors are often the ones clients create themselves. Listening for the client’s own metaphors can be more helpful than waiting for the right moment to introduce a predetermined conversational prompt. Nevertheless, having a range of prompts can allow for a matching of tools to the client’s needs and interests.
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Sometimes clients can experience the joy of discovery when they ‘bump into’ tools that might be sitting unannounced on the worker’s desk or as part of a travelling toolbox.
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Tools do not have to be complete or comprehensive to work effectively. Occasionally we find someone is concerned that one of our card sets leaves an important concept out. We believe that if the cards suggest something that is not explicit, then they have done their job. We also believe that in many situations it is better to make a selection of cards rather than use the full set.
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There is nothing sacred about our cards. They can be stuck on noticeboards or fridge doors. They can be given away. However, this is one reason we produce stickers; it means they can be given away more cheaply and with less temptation to infringe copyright!
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All our materials are simply a means to an end. They can amplify the power of words and can be used in ways that celebrate multiple intelligences and different learning styles. But they are dispensable. And it can certainly be of great long-term value to work with clients to create their own materials that explore and celebrate learning, growth and curiosity.
‘There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.’
Jalal-ud-din Rumi
Journalling – Divining with a pen
There are as many forms of journalling as there are people who like to scribble, doodle and draw, write poetry or stories, imagine conversations, and document dreams or family events.
Journalling is a way of distilling thoughts, to gain perspective and to connect with what is important in our lives. Journalling allows you to use your pen much as a water diviner uses a divining rod to locate underground streams. Using a simple pen and paper we can locate those streams of consciousness that are hidden beneath the surface of our everyday thought.
Journalling is increasingly becoming recognised as a powerful therapeutic tool that professionals can offer to clients to encourage remembering and reflection. Many people are especially drawn to their notebooks and journals in times of challenge and transition to help them make sense of what is happening in their lives. Journalling can also be a valuable tool for goal-setting and monitoring our emotional and mental wellbeing.
Quite simply, there is great power in being able to name, record and express a feeling or experience; even if that experience is a painful or negative one. It is healing to express the truth as we experience it. Finding the right words or image is like shining a clear light on that experience. And then—sometimes—a piece of magic takes place; the experience can be more lightly held.
Very importantly, through journalling our experiences can be told very safely using metaphors, imagined characters and stories.
‘A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.’
Frank Capra
Here’s a review of a great companion to our Inside Out journalling kit:
Living Words – Journal
writing for self-discovery, insight and creativity
Author: Stephanie
Dowrick
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2003
ISBN: 0 670 04153 X
Cat No.
9328 RRP $ 29.95
To view and
order this book online, please click
here.
Traditionally, the act of journalling has
been seen as the privilege of troubled teenage girls (think Marsha Brady) or,
worse still, as something self-indulgent—a waste of our ever more precious
‘adult’ time.
But more recent studies have
documented what the Marsha Bradys of the world have always known: confiding in
the pages of a journal is helpful and healing, on both physical and emotional
levels.
In this beautifully presented
journal-style book, Stephanie Dowrick draws on the accumulated knowledge of more
than a century of journal writers and combines it with her own experience as a
writer and psychotherapist to encourage the writer and thinker in us all.
Full of practical suggestions
on how to get pen to paper, Living Words is brimming with inspirational
quotes from writers and thinkers, past and present. In fact, collecting quotes
is one of the techniques that Dowrick suggests as a ‘starter’ for journalling,
and a way of adding emotional depth to our everyday reading.
Living Words
shatters the notion of writer’s block. A section at the end of the book provides
125 topics to write about. And if that doesn’t work, Dowrick suggests writing
about why you can’t think of anything to write. There’s no getting off the
hook.
The book covers every aspect
of journalling, from very practical tasks such as choosing the right pen and
paper, to the many and varied techniques for externalising our thoughts, ideas
and impressions.
All the suggestions are
underpinned by Dowrick’s six key principles for journalling: write your journal for
yourself; write regularly; be truthful; regard your writing as a gift for
yourself; respect what you discover and trust yourself.
Even those who don’t plan to
launch into journalling themselves will find this book peppered with interesting
snippets from the lives of famous writers, like this gem from the journals of
Franz Kafka in August 1914.
‘Germany has declared war on Russia. Swimming in
the afternoon.’
Living Words builds
on the notion that extraordinary things happen in the midst of our ‘ordinary’
lives; that by following Stephanie Dowrick’s suggestions our writing and
self-discovery may take off in directions we cannot yet conceive or imagine.
By John Holton
Writer-in-Residence, Innovative Resources
‘Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.’
Emily Dickinson
By
Gregory Heath