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• Integrating the Arts with Medicine // with Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy

  • Start
    15 January 2025
  • End
    11 March 2025
  • Location
    Online
  • Spaces left
    12

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  Medicine desperately needs the arts.

  But artists can be quickly rejected when they don’t understand the culture of medicine and how doctors think.
  

  Our aim is to provide language and visual artists with sufficient understanding of the culture of medicine that they can interact with physicians and other health professionals to bring the arts into patient care and the environment of medicine.

  We also want to expose health care practitioners to the world of the artist to better understand how to interact with artists to improve patient care and also for their personal benefit.

  Health care practitioners work within implicit stories that are largely not understood or examined by them. Through engaging with the arts, they can become more aware of these stories and able to reflect upon how they might change their stories to provide better patient care and also to nurture themselves and prevent personal burnout.

  Medicine desperately needs the arts, but artists can be quickly rejected when they don’t understand the culture of medicine and how doctors think. To forestall that quick rejection, doctors need to understand how artists think.

  Rita Charon of Columbia University has written about the importance of health care practitioners writing stories about their patients and their patient encounters.

  • Poetry and the visual arts provide other means for becoming aware of feelings, beliefs, and biases.
  • Improved language arts skills help physicians to find the metaphors of their patients’ illnesses.

  We will finish the course by inviting participants to write a proposal for how they could bring their art into a health care setting within their environment. We hope they will present this proposal and make a positive contribution to that setting.

  Week by Week
  

  Week 1. Introduction to the arts in medicine with examples of successful interactions and programs.

  Week 2. How do doctors think?

  Week 3. How do artists think?

  Week 4. What are the constraints existing in health care settings that make it hard to introduce the arts.

  Week 5. Telling stories about patients – writing fiction and creative non-fiction.

  Week 6. Poetry and medicine

  Week 7. Bringing the Visual Arts into medicine

  Week 8. Discussing projects that could be proposed into health care settings in participants’ neighborhoods.

  Who Should Take This Class
  

  We are interested in attracting artists of all types who want to bring their art into medicine. We also want to attract health care practitioners who are open to the arts and want more exposure to the arts and how they can use the arts in patient care and for their own personal growth and well-being.

  We hope to create an opportunity for interactions within the live part of the class and also on the discussion board among health care practitioners and artists.

  TLAN offers scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

  Format

  This is a hybrid online class, conducted through Zoom meetings and the online classroom Wet Ink.

  Zoom meetings are scheduled for Tuesdays, 4:30-6 ET on January 21, 2025; January 29, 2025; February 4, 2025; February 11, 2025; February 18.2025; February 25, 2025; and March 4, 2025. Sessions will be recorded and made available only to the class.  

  Online readings and an asynchronous discussion board will be hosted on the online teaching platform Wet Ink. The day before class begins, you will receive an email invitation from Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile-friendly. The Wet Ink platform allows you to log in and complete the coursework on your own time. 

  About the Facilitators

  Lewis Mehl-Madrona is a practicing physician and a writer of creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction. He studied creative writing at Indiana University and then attended Stanford University School of Medicine. He finished his postgraduate medical training in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont. He completed the Novel Writing Certificate Program at Stanford University and has a first novel that is in process of being published. He has also published poetry, photography, and short fiction. He wrote Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, a trilogy of stories about healing with traditional elders. 

  Barbara Mainguy studied philosophy at the University of Toronto, Creative Arts Therapy at Concordia University, and received a Master of Social Work from the University of Maine. She practices psychotherapy with the tribes of Maine. Barbara completed a certificate program in the Arts and Medicine at the University of Maine, which Lewis helped co-create.

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• The Arc of Storytelling from the Writer’s Subconscious // with Riham Adly

  • Start
    22 January 2025
  • End
    04 March 2025
  • Location
    Online
  • Spaces left
    10

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  Have you ever wondered if stories had a mind of their own?

  If they had a purpose? A journey they must cover, regardless of who is telling them? 

  Have you ever stopped to think why you choose to write certain stories in certain genres in certain settings? 

  Have you considered why sometimes you start your story with what your character wants (desire) or what your character fears (conflict)? And why? And what does that say about you and your story structure? Or is it again, the stories have a mind of their own?  

  As humans we are the only species that resorts to storytelling to try to understand ourselves.

  That’s why we have story arcs, character arc, and character archetypes. Begging, Middle, End…Repeat.  Sometimes the end isn’t even an ending.  Sometimes a story about a character’s anger or grief isn’t at all about that but is rather about their hidden shame.

  Arcs are half circles. You start somewhere, you get provoked to move even if you don’t want to, you reach a climax, the peak of the half circle and then you go down.

  Who creates this arc?

  Is it you the conscious writer with the story idea and expected structure? Or is it the deeper, darker, and sometimes wiser part of you that’s kept truths, feelings and events locked in a black box at the back of your mind, where stories are forced to live in seclusion? That black box is the subconscious which is the seat of repressed memories and hidden emotions. Imagery and symbolism are its language. 

  Explore all of this in The Arc of Storytelling from the Writer’s Subconscious. Discover the journey of story structure through the writer’s internal & external vision/ voice, the why & how you tell your short stories, longer stories, and memoir.

  Week by Week

  Part I:  The Story Shows Itself to me

  Week one (Story theme ):  I’ve often thought of the theme as the story’s label.  But now really, what is theme? Is it really a label, a moral, a message? Or is it what the story wants to reveal to you?  We think of theme as the “Why” we write the story. We start with a concept. The Theme is: Love, Heartbreak, Politics, or what happens when you lose your favourite socks.  But what if, sometimes, we write without really knowing what it is that we’re writing about? What if the theme has an arc of its own. It starts somewhere and it ends somewhere else.  In this lesson we’ll communicate with our story’s theme, explore its elements, and its possible arcs to be ready for the next step.

  Week Two (Story Identity): Every story is told in one of two ways: 

  • It is told through the eyes of love or what I would like to call desire.
  • Or It is told through the eyes of fear or what I would like to call conflict.

  Your stories have their identities according to your vision/ perspective and your voice. Will your story start with your character’s desires or your character’s fears? Encounters or Avoidances? What will the arc of your story’s identity be? You start with what they want and how they face conflicts? Or with what they fear and how they find what they need or want?  In this lesson we’ll explore we’ll look at emotional resonance and discover the map of emotions and emotional functions of the five senses, and it is from there that we’ll able to find out the identity of our story so we can be ready for the next step.

  Week Three: Story Circuits/ Behaviour/ Pattern: Our lives run in arcs or even circles according to the seven circuits of affective emotional networks in our brains:

  The Seeking/Desire network, the separation/ grief network, the Rage/ Anger network, the Care/ maternal network, the Lust/ Sexual network, the Play/ social engagement system, the Fear/ Anxiety system.

  These neural circuit networks determine human behaviour and comfort zone. The story has its own circuit/ Pattern. Those circuits should work in a certain order. What are the circuits within your story, what happens when the order is messed up, how does this translate into behaviour? Will these circuits cause the story to behave in a certain way towards the reader? Will it delight the reader, hit the reader hard with some truths, enlighten the reader. In this lesson we’ll look at story Circuits/ Behaviour and how it affects your audience through the use of literary devices, word choice, syntax, and rhythm so this can take us to the next step.

  Part II:  What The Story Wants to Reveal to me

  Week Four: Story Hue-man/ Humans: Now, since we’re in the business of exploring story arcs, I believe the topic of archetypes is pretty much unavoidable, especially that we’re talking character or rather the doers of the story. In this lesson we’ll look at the four basic emotive norms that create the four major character archetypes (four parts of the self). Which one of those takes the lead in the character’s personality? What happens when this leading intrinsic archetype gets deformed or forced to hide? What mask will this character wear? What hue will they carry to the next step? What will the story be able to reveal through that?

  Week Five: Story Voice/ Perspective and Point of View: We’re all familiar with creating character point of view and perspective. The character speaks through either the first, second, or third point of view. But, what about the story’s voice? The actual perspective from which the story wants you to see and receive its events? In this week , the story will want to play a game with us called: put yourself in my place. We’ll experiment with different perspectives and voices and choose the one that best serve’s our story’s purpose.

  Week Six: Story Place/Time: This week is about setting. Setting is not just where the story takes place, its where its internal world manifests and comes out to the world. Setting is the story context within which events take shape. In this week we’ll look at what the story wants to reveal through setting. The story wants you to understand that worlds are built from the inside/ out , not from the outside/in.

  Who Should Take This Class

  Novelists, memoirists, short story writers, coaches, TLAN artists, and therapists looking for innovative ways to help their patients or clients or anyone suffering from creative blocks. 

  Students should expect to spend 3 hours per week perusing resources and readings, engaging in several writing/creation prompts, and briefly responding to peers’ work. From our interactions, we sustain a welcoming and inspiring community together.

  We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.
  

  Format

  This is an online class, hosted on the online teaching platform, Wet Ink, as well as Zoom. The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. Wet Ink is mobile-friendly and there are no browser requirements.

  The course will include five optional zoom classes taking place Saturdays from 1:30-2:30 pm EST.  Because they are optional, the Zoom sessions will not be recorded.

  About the Facilitator

  Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt.

  In 2013 her story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. She was short-listed several times for the Strand International Flash Fiction Contest. Riham is a Best of the NET and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

  Her work is included in the “Best Micro-fiction 2020” anthology. Her flash fiction has appeared in over fifty journals such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review. 

  Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 words magazine and as a first reader in Vestal Review magazine. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for over five years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region. Riham’s flash fiction collection “Love is Make-Believe” was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House Publications in the UK.

  Riham is also a certified Luscher Diagnostic Test Practitioner, an NLP student, and a specialist in psychosomatic medicine.
  

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• Transformative Language Arts Network Community Circles

  • When
    26 January 2025
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    online

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  Transformative Language Arts Network Community Circles

  
  

  This month's conversation is about 

  Creating Community

  The work of Transformative Language Arts is rooted in community.

  TLAN Community Circles provide a welcoming space to connect with fellow practitioners, share our stories, practices, ideas, and challenges, and deepen our understanding of this powerful work.

  These online gatherings foster thoughtful conversation, creative exchange, and meaningful community building around the shared belief in the transformational power of words.

  Whether you are just beginning or well along in your TLA journey, Community Circles offer a supportive space to connect, explore, and grow alongside others who share your passion.
  
  

  Who Should Participate?

  Community Circles are open to everyone—whether you’re a seasoned TLA practitioner, a curious newcomer, or someone passionate about using words for healing, change, or creativity. Writers, artists, educators, healers, activists, and anyone who values the power of language and seeks to feel supported in their TLA journey will find connection, inspiration, and belonging here.

  Format

  When: Every other month in 2025 (1/26, 3/23, 5/18, 7/20, 9/21, and 11/16) from 5–6:30 PM ET.
  Where: Virtual on Zoom (join from anywhere!)
  What to Expect: Each session features an opening and closing ritual, a brief check-in and writing practice, and a facilitated discussion around a TLA-related topic.
  Cost: The circles are free to attend, with donations welcomed to help sustain our work. Registration is required. 

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• Seeding change: Creating When Life is Hard // with Tracie Nichols

  • When
    02 February 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    online
  • Spaces left
    1

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  You know those times when life grabs you and shakes you like a snow globe then stretches you batwing thin across too many and too much?

  This practice is for those times. 

  As word-loving creators, we turn to language to help us make sense of both our inner and outer worlds. But what happens when life is hard and crafting a poem or other piece feels like a blank page too far? That’s where this practice reaches out a gentle tendril and won’t let you fall. 

  I started this practice because I was overwhelmed by the demands of managing both my neurodivergence and menopause while learning a new job, and in the background was a constant hum of grief for a struggling family member. My attention was tattered. Noticing only happened in fragments. My writing was constrained to torn corners of time. —Tracie Nichols

  Seeding Change invites us to:

  • connect to creativity in times of overwhelm.
  • create without needing to generate new writing.
  • think about making poems in a different way—more collage or mosaic than essay or novel.

  While it's oriented toward generating poems, it can be used to assemble the seeds for flash fiction, creative nonfiction, short stories, plays, monologues, songs—any form of word artistry.

  This two-hour Zoom class is generative.

  You will emerge with a collection of your own poem seeds—perhaps even a nascent poem or story—and your own version of this process to use when life is hard.

  Who Should Take This Class

  • Writers and poets (aspiring or established) with limited time and, more importantly, limited headspace, who need to engage with language in the brief moments life allows. 
    
  • Anyone who needs reminding that, no matter how stretched-thin they are, their word artistry is still with them—still there to support and nourish them.

  Format
  

  This class will be presented Sunday, February 2, 2025 from 3-5 PM ET/ 2-4 PM CT/ 1-3 PM MT/ 12-2 PM PT / 8-10 PM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The day after class a recording, as well as notes and resources from the class, will be emailed to class members. 

  About the Facilitator

  Tracie Nichols is a poet, facilitator, and the current Managing Director of The Transformative Language Arts Network. Over the past 20 years, inspired by her graduate work in Transformative Learning and Change, she has designed and facilitated hundreds of virtual and in-person learning experiences for people seeking personal transformation and growth. Tracie spent ten intense, wonderfully complex, successful years as a business and life coach, finally closing her coaching practice two years ago and turning her creative energies to writing (mostly) poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Rogue Agent, Text Power Telling, and kerning. You can connect with her at TracieNichols.com or on Substack. 

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• Sustainable Marketing Strategy for Writers, Changemakers, and other Magical TLArtists // with Tracie Nichols

  • Start
    12 February 2025
  • End
    04 March 2025
  • Location
    Online

  Register

  
  

  I’ll bet your work and art is quietly (or not so quietly) life-changing. 

  I’ll also bet not enough people know about it—or you—right? 

  Sustainable Marketing Strategy for Writers, Changemakers, and other Magical TLArtists will help you (re)define marketing and promotion (as well as terms and concepts like business growth, strategy, and community building) as practices that can be both sustainable and successful while also being aligned with your values, creative and business goals, and available expendable energy. (In other words, how many spoons can you devote to this?)

  At the end of our three weeks together, you will: 

  —Know what you want your marketing to do for you/your business

  —Have the foundation of a sustainable marketing strategy grounded in

  • language and methods of communication meaningful to both you and your community
  • knowing the best pace for your available time and energy
  • researching the best places/platforms for the ways you most effectively and genuinely communicate

  —Be part of a network of other creatives working to build sustainable marketing practices

  —Be supported by a collection of resources and tools

  In short—this is a professional development course designed to make strategies for growing your community and business sane and sustainable. 

  Week By Week 

  Week 1: Evicting your inner late-night infomercial huckster, (or how your assumptions about marketing are probably not helping you grow your business) 

  This week we will:

  • look at the ways ubiquitous, relentless, mainstream marketing consciously and unconsciously shapes what we think marketing is, the language we use to define it and ourselves, and what it must look or sound like. 
  • redefine and/or reclaim “marketing” and “promotion” as actions you take to help your community understand what you do and how it helps them so they can make a conscious, informed choice to work with you, (buy from you, join your thing).

  Week 2: You & your community—intersecting ecosystems. Creating a sustainable marketing strategy starts with knowing yourself and your community.

  Our activities this week will:

  • delve into who you are as a TLArtist; your values, your native communication style, the personality and neurologic traits that underpin how you think, create, and take action. 
  • explore who are the people in your community, how can you connect with them, what are the ways they will be looking for help?
  • clarify/define the kind of conversation and/or reciprocal relationship you and your community want to be having.

  Week 3: Market like a tree. Be rooted. Offer oxygen—Your sustainable marketing strategies. This week we will plant the seeds of a marketing strategy:

  • aligned with how you communicate, your goals, your working rhythm and expendable energy.
  • that feels genuine and inviting to your community.
  • that is both a short and a long-term strategy—meaning actions you can take right away and actions you can build up to over time.

  Who Should Take This Class

  You should join us if you're a TLArtist* interested in building your community and/or your practice without burning out, becoming overwhelmed, or feeling inauthentic, pushy, or like you’re imposing on anyone. This applies to both solo practitioners and people who are responsible for community building for an organization.

  NOTE: While this approach to marketing is especially helpful for introverts, ambiverts, Highly Sensitive People (HSP) and/or people with ADHD, anyone who feels alienated by traditional marketing methods will definitely find inspiration here. 

  *Who are TLArts practitioners? Teachers, counselors, writers, storytellers, performers, songwriters, poets, community leaders and activists, and other artists using language for individual or community transformation.

  We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.
  

  Format

  Course materials will be delivered through a hybrid of weekly Zoom sessions and written resources sent via email.

  The majority of the work will happen in the weekly two-hour Zoom meetings, held on three consecutive Saturdays from 11 AM-1 PM ET (10 AM -12 PM CT | 9-11 AM MT | 8-10 AM PT | 4-6 PM UTC): Feb.15, Feb. 22 and March 1, 2025. Sessions will be recorded and made available to students only. 

  This class utilizes personal reflection, group discussion, and writing exercises to explore and redefine marketing so it becomes a useful and sustainable business strategy for creatives like TLArtists. You should plan to spend about three hours per week on the class engaging in the Zoom meetings and outside writing exercises and research. 
  

  About the Facilitator

  Tracie Nichols is a poet, facilitator, and the current Managing Director of The Transformative Language Arts Network. Over the past 20 years, inspired by her graduate work in Transformative Learning and Change, she has designed and facilitated hundreds of virtual and in-person learning experiences for people seeking personal transformation and growth. Tracie spent ten intense, wonderfully complex, and successful years as a business and life coach, finally closing her coaching practice two years ago and turning her creative energies to writing (mostly) poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Rogue Agent Text Power Telling and kerning. You can connect with her on her website or her Substack Breathing Space.
  

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• Be Your Own Valentine Writing Workshop // with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

  • When
    15 February 2025
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    online
  • Spaces left
    25

  Register

  

  

  Join a warm and lively writing circle (over Zoom) to write about who and what you love and to use your writing to discern how to love better.

  Be Your Own Valentine Writing Workshop is being offered as a fundraiser—all proceeds will be donated to TLAN.

  Writing can be a practice of opening your heart to other humans, the natural world, and your own good soul. Join a warm and lively writing circle (over Zoom) to write about who and what you love and to use your writing to discern how to love better. 

  Just the act of making something out of words is a way of loving the time and place where you are. Writing together is a loving practice that can help us open up and come to know your own hearts more.

  In this lively workshop, we’ll gather together to find greater inspiration, guidance, and tenderness through reading and considering how poetry can speak to myriad forms of love. Drawing from the poetry of such writers as Joy Harjo, Derek Wolcott, e.e cummings, Muriel Rukeyser, Willa Cather, Rita Dove, Walt Whitman, Robert Bly, Jane Kenyon, Harold Littlebird, David Whyte, Rumi, we’ll find new inspiration, plus an overflowing bouquet of writing prompts we can explore after our time together.

  
  

  After each class I recognize the peaceful place the class creates in me. My response to listening to others and hearing your responses to our work fills me with contentment, joy, and satisfaction. —Patricia Durkin
  

  
  

  Participants will leave with a greater sense of how the poetic power of language can help us access more our good selves as well as how writing together and on our own can be an essential practice of loving-kindness and creativity.
  

  Who Should Attend?
  

  This workshop is a valentine to anyone who writes, wants to start writing, or is ready to return to writing. All the prompts are aimed to meet you where you are with lots of options for engaging in ways to help you better see and celebrate your own definitions of what love can be in your life, family or community, and our world.

  
  

  I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and working with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg for the past decade, and have rarely encountered a more insightful, compassionate, or integrous teacher and coach. —Mark Matousek, award-winning teacher, author, and mentor
  

  
  

  Format
  

  This class will be presented Saturday, February 15, 2024 from 3-5 PM ET/ 2-4 PM CT/ 1-3 PM MT/ 12-2 PM PT / 8-10 PM UTC as a one-time, two-hour Zoom session. The day after class a recording, as well as notes and resources from the class, will be emailed to class members only.

  Your Registration Fee is a Donation
  

  Because this event is so generously being offered by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as a fundraiser, your entire registration fee will go directly to support scholarships, program development, and other offerings meant to expand and enrich our community. You will be helping programs like:

  • Power of Words Scholarship Fund
  • Online Class Scholarship Fund
  • The Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund (conference and online class support for both BIPOC people and people who are living with serious illness and/or disabilities.)
  • Our free and open to all Community Circles and Virtual Salons

  Registration Levels:

  • Level I – $200.00
  • Level II – $150.00
  • Level III – $75.00
  • Level IV – $50.00

  We thank you. 

  About the Facilitator

  Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate, is the founder of Transformative Language Arts and the author of two dozen books. Her publications include How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir.

  A writing and right livelihood coach, working with people to bring what wants to be written and lived into being, Mirriam-Goldberg offers community writing workshops widely, and with Kelley Hunt, Brave Voice retreats. She also co-leads the Your Right Livelihood class and retreat with Kathryn Lorenzen, and the Art of Facilitation training with Joy Roulier Sawyer, with whom she also offers the annual Writing from the Soul retreat.

  Born hard-wired to make something (in art, music, and especially writing), Caryn’s long-time callings include writing as a spiritual and ecological path, yoga, drawing, cultivating a loving marriage, family, and community, and helping herself and others make and take leaps into the miraculous work of their lives.

  You can connect with Caryn at:

  https://www.carynmirriamgoldberg.com/

  https://www.instagram.com/carynmirriamgoldberg

  https://www.facebook.com/CarynMirriamGoldbergWriter

  https://www.linkedin.com/in/caryn-mirriam-goldberg-3772006/

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• TLA Network Virtual Salon

  • When
    23 February 2025
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom meeting - link to be shared
  • Registered
    Be the first

  Register

  
  

  TLA Network Virtual Salon

  Sunday, February 23, 2025

  Join Us!

  5:00–6:30 pm ET (UTC-5)
  

  4:00–5:30 pm CT // 3:00–4:30 pm MT // 2:00–3:30 pm PT // 10:00-11:30 pm UTC

  Click here to find your timezone.

  
  

  Our Virtual Salons feature TLAN members who all use the written, spoken, or sung word for personal and community transformation. TLAN members have incredibly generous spirits, and we are excited to provide a venue to feature their artistic work.
  

  The Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN) virtual salons feature presenters who are active members of TLAN. Each presenter will have 5-7 minutes to present their written, spoken, or sung work followed by a brief period of audience response. 

  Potential Presenters: To present at the Virtual Salon you must be an active member of TLAN. Active members are current on their dues. (Check on your membership status or re-join TLAN.)

  If you are interested in presenting at the February Virtual Salon, please fill out the Google Form. If we have a multitude of entries we may have to feature you at a future salon. 

  Audience members: Registration is FREE and open to anyone, not just members of TLAN and will take place online via Zoom. 

  After the reading, there will be an artist talkback and time for questions and engagement from the audience. 

  You must register if you would like to attend: a Zoom link will be sent to all registrants the day before the event. We look forward to seeing you there!

  
  

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• Foundations of Facilitation // with Amanda Faye Lacson & Tracie Nichols

  • Start
    05 March 2025
  • End
    29 April 2025
  • Location
    online
  • Spaces left
    33

  Register

  
  

  This course introduces the foundations and best practices of facilitation to TLA practitioners.

  You will learn about yourself as a facilitator and explore principles for designing and facilitating effective workshops that carefully consider ways to support different populations.

  You will emerge from the class with a Capstone Project, a detailed workshop proposal that covers the content and structure of your program; considerations for marketing, ethics, technology, and moving in the physical space depending on the populations you plan to welcome in; and how you might facilitate the work beyond the workshop space and connect to a larger community. 

  Weekly Zoom sessions and Wet Ink lessons with extensive resources will cover course content and offer opportunities to engage with and practice facilitation principles. Weekly assignments will include readings, written responses, and self-care practices.

  Week by Week

  Week 1: Roles & Rules: Introduction to Facilitation

  In this opening session, we’ll introduce ourselves, the course, and the foundational principles of facilitation. These principles are rooted in the idea that whatever the subject or situation, the goal of facilitation is to support individual and collective transformation. We’ll also cover the importance of establishing ground rules and prioritizing self-care.

  Week 2: Good Bones: Structuring Workshops for Effective Facilitation

  Effective facilitation depends on a program that has “good bones.” In this session, we’ll explore   foundational principles and techniques for planning, organizing, and reviewing facilitation sessions. We’ll focus on ways to build a solid yet flexible structure that supports your goals and meets the needs of your participants.

  Week 3: Considering Power Dynamics of Rank and Class

  As a course designer and facilitator, you bring a position of privilege and higher rank into a room from the beginning. Tied up with rank, especially in our society, is class, which isn’t just salaries earned, but what access people have to good education, meaningful employment, and safe communities. In this week we will discuss what ranks we live with on a regular basis, and the ones that we take on and off, depending on the situation. We will also discuss perceived power, and what you may or may not want to do to take on or cede power in the groups you facilitate.

  Week 4: Facilitating across Identity: 

  In this session, we will look at different ways to facilitate groups of mixed identity, including affiliations with race, gender, sexuality, generations and parenthood. We will learn how we are socialized to think about different identities; if/how we have had experience with conversations across identities; and what considerations we can adopt when creating a space that will be welcoming across identity. 

  Week 5: Facilitating across Disabled, Neurodiverse and Aging Bodies:

  In this session, we will discuss how to prepare for and facilitate across disability, neurodiversity, serious illness, and aging bodies. We are operating from a social model of disability, which says “individual limitations are not the cause of disability. Rather, it is society’s failure to provide appropriate services and adequately ensure that the needs of disabled people are taken into account in societal organization.” We want to discuss how we can create spaces that do not “disable” our participants. How can we structure access in our workshops from the beginning, instead of having to create accommodations as issues arise?

  Week 6: Trauma-Informed Facilitation: 

  No matter what kind of workshop or event you facilitate, a majority of your participants will have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lives. And as transformative language artists, we often work with specific survivor populations to offer tools and opportunities for personal and communal healing. In this session, we’ll discuss trauma, its impact, and why a trauma-informed approach is so important in facilitation. You’ll learn the key principles of trauma-informed facilitation as well as practical steps to take before, during, and after facilitating. You’ll also be reminded of the importance of self-awareness and self-care as a trauma-informed facilitator.

  Week 7: Facilitating for Community Transformation:

  One of the unique tasks of a Transformative Language Artist is that we use words not only for personal transformation, but to effect change in our communities. In this session, we will discuss ways to bring your work and the work of your participants out into the community. How can you continue the conversation beyond the workshop space? Who, in your community, needs your work? What is the change that you wish to see in your community? Through reviewing examples of TLA in the world, we will consider ways you as a facilitator can contribute to community dialogue and transformation. 

  Week 8: Capstone Project Presentations:

  The final week will include the opportunity to present your Capstone Project, a document that outlines the offering you would like to present in your community, and what considerations you plan to take in your facilitation approach. As this is a living document that you will work on throughout the class, we will discuss: How has your vision evolved from the beginning of class? What challenges or barriers do you anticipate in fulfilling this work? What considerations have you most appreciated? What considerations may you have missed?

  Who Should Take This Class
  

  This class is required for the Certification in TLA Foundations. It is appropriate for beginning and seasoned facilitators who are new to TLA; TLA practitioners who are seasoned in their art and looking to facilitate work in their community; and TLA artists and facilitators who want to update their practices with current language and best practices around community identities.

  Format
  

  Weekly Zoom sessions are tentatively scheduled for Saturday March 8, 15, 22, 29 and April 5, 12, 19 & 26, 2025 from 1-2:30 p.m. EDT (UTC -4). Click here to convert to your time zone.

  Because we are dedicated to making the course as accessible as possible, all sessions will be recorded. All class materials (lessons, assignments, and extensive resources) will be shared each week in Wet Ink. Students who cannot make a live call have the option of watching or listening to the recording and responding to the prompts/questions in the asynchronous classroom platform, Wet Ink.

  About the Facilitators

  Amanda Faye Lacson (she/hers) is a Filipina-American writer, photographer and historian. She examines how our identities are shaped, how they impact the way we move in the world, and how we write our history through her creative nonfiction and playwriting; photography documenting the artistic process; oral history-oriented podcast interviewing; and by creating and facilitating community-based workshops for the family historian. Amanda is a board member and Membership co-chair of the Transformative Language Arts Network; writer, performer and director with the Playful Substance theater company; and producer, host and editor of Goddard in the World Podcast. She is also the founder of FamilyArchive Business, a studio designed to support the family historian at any point in the archiving process, from organizing photos in boxes to creating a final product to share with the family.

  Recent projects include: writing and performing work based on her experience as a Pinay child and mother in the devised theater piece Raised Pinay: The 5^th Generation; presenting a generative writing workshop on using Transformative Language Arts to create and deepen one’s family archive at the TLAN Power of Words conference; writing a satirical monologue from the perspective of Christopher Columbus reckoning with his legacy in the afterlife, for Playful Substance; and photographing classical Indian dance performance by Brooklyn Raga Massive for Chelsea Factory. Keep up with Amanda's work at amandafayelacson.com.

  Tracie Nichols (she/her) is a poet, facilitator, HSP, over-thinker, introvert, and woman of deepening years. When she's not doing managing director things for the Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN), she writes poetry and creates seasonal word adventures for shy but curious people. 

  Tracie’s appreciation for the power of words to heal and transform started decades ago when she began writing poems to navigate early trauma. She realized she'd found home with the Transformative Language Arts Network community when she realized it merged the principles of her graduate degree in Transformative Learning and Change with her passion for writing as path to healing and growth.

  Today, she lives in southeastern Pennsylvania with her husband, occasionally her adult children, and a very large ginger tabby cat named Strider. She writes poems from her tiny desk under the wide reach of two old Sycamore trees. Tracie is honored that her recent work has appeared in kerning, Rogue Agent, Text Power Telling, and The Weight of Motherhood anthology.

  Connect with Tracie at tracienichols.com.

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• 2025 Power of Words Conference

  • Start
    02 October 2025
  •  
  • End
    05 October 2025
  •  
  • Location
    Unity Village, 1900 NW Blue Parkway, Unity Village, Missouri

  Register

  
  

  Join the Power of Words Conference to explore the written, spoken and sung word to find how it can bring liberation, celebration and transformation within our communities. 
  

  Network with writers, storytellers, performers, musicians, health professionals, educators, and change-makers to connect with those who share your passion of making a difference with words.   

  Discover diversity and experience visionary voices at keynote sessions. Get inspired with workshops in five areas:  Social Transformation, Right Livelihood, Engaged Spirituality, Narrative Healing and Ecological TLA.

  Your registration payment includes main conference events only. Meal plans will be sold separately.

  Lodging and pre-conference events are an additional charge.

  

  Lodging & Travel

  We are meeting at the beautiful and welcoming Unity Village in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. 

  

  PLEASE NOTE OUR REGISTRATION CANCELLATION POLICY:

  If you need to cancel your registration, please refer to the following schedule.
  

  • Aug. 14, 2025: Last day for full refund, transfer, or credit, minus $20 processing fee
  • Sept. 11, 2025: Last day for 75% refund, transfer, or credit, minus $20 processing fee

  No refunds, transfers, or credits issued after SEPTEMBER 11, 2025. (In the case of unexpected life circumstances—such as hospitalization or death in the family—contact us and we will try to do what we can.)

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