It’s official….’ProsperArty’ has been named, signed and sealed!

Last year I began the process to trademark the name “ProsperArty”…a name I created to define my ART of Change tools and programs.

ProsperArty = Experiencing Prosperity by using the mediums of Art / Creativity.

Prosperity as I define it, is  to develop, grow  and flourish in what ever areas we value and consider to be  important…ProsperArty is a personal journey on a Universal theme that recognises the balance and harmony of nature and the creative state.

I had an afternoon tea with some of the Women I have worked with in the past, currently work with or have projects emerging throughout 2009…

It was a wonderful afternoon with some great food… unfortunately in  the images below  my ProsperArty guests are absent, as we were too busy nattering and chattering in our talking circle and eating and laughing to remember to take photos.

However I did capture the food!…and the flowers…and a few other things from the day…beginning with the Zebra that pulled up out the front just as we were getting under way…a noisy Zebra that came to trim trees and chomp branches! Before long we were noisier than the tree munching Zebra of course!

 

Sal made chocolate mousse that I decorated with mint and twelve white chocolate buttons…representing the Clock..because “It’s Time” for ProsperArty……

 

Sa’s gorgeous daughter Gemma made lime and lemon tart…I made peanut crunchie biscuits and apricot with white chocolate and almond balls…What a high calorie, yummy launch!

 

I chose the Celtic triple spiral theme (Triskele)  for the ProsperArty gift …we had a lot of fun threading them onto elastic to create a pendant. The 7 purple dots represent the 7 Sisters…that cluster of stars that has birthed  mythology and Dreaming stories right across the planet.. There were 7 Women present at the time, more guests  arrived later …

My recent trip to Matariki bay- bay of the 7 Sisters in Aotearoa (New Zealand) is a significant part of the essence of  ProsperArty…

 

I liked how the river stone-shaped  pendants looked in their circle before sharing them around. (Made with air drying das clay, painted with acrylics and sealed with high gloss varnish. I drew the design with permanet marker)

 

My Trademark Certification…ProsperArty…

 

Pilawuk made a gift of the most breath taking silk wall hanging based on some of my ProsperArty designs…if you look closely you can see the Warrior Woman image in the centre..and on the sides forming “Yesterday, today and tomorrow”…a theme from my invitation…      

Magic!!…thank you Pilawuk…Silk Queen Goddess!

 

Here is a side view…aren’t the colours just deliciously  ProsperArteous?!

 

Thankyou to my former colleagues Cathy, Desi and the Malvern Place team for the flowers and words of great encouragement and good will…

A lovely afternoon with a group of Women who live and breathe the essence of ProsperArty’s highest hopes and dreams…..

Let the Magic begin!

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“ProsperArty” was dreamt and created on traditional Aboriginal Land and I acknowledge the Kaurna people as the custodians of this part of the country and recognise the authority  of the  Dreamtime as holding the key to many of the challenges we are facing in Australia today.

Create New Dreams…Seeding the Future Vision

We had a wonderful weekend camp…thanks to the gorgeous Goddesses who came from two Communities up north to join us in the Riverland.

Along with the Mandala art and making clay beads, we work-shopped the Vision for the Womens groups…then painted terra cotta pots and planted the Sunflower seeds that will grow along with the new changes..

Thankyou to the Women for allowing us to photograph the art work and capture the many wonderful moments where Nanas and great grandchildren, Community leaders and members sat and enjoyed the  creative processes  together….what better way to spend a weekend in the Riverland sun?

Deanna Nungala and I feel very privileged to have been invited to host the Celeberating our Community camp and look forward to our Miminis Nopin Inc ventures in 2009 when we can return the gifting by visiting the Women and seeing how the Sunflowers have grown….

Miminis Nopin – Women on the Move…

 

We think we have found art based activities that everyone- young and old -can enjoy together…and sme1954 …you may find new pathways open when you get creative too!

 

Deanna and I wearing the clay necklaces we made during the Apology week, to honor the Mothers whose children were stolen from them.  Nungala is a Stolen Generation survivor and a Warrior Woman of the heart in the truest sense….

 

Our Vision Workshopping Board….

 

Painting the clay beads they have rolled earlier in the day is wonderful for concentration for the little kids and fun~creativity for all ages…

 

Little sister can create and paint her own beads too!

 

 

This pot-painter will seed some fantastic changes for her  Community I am sure…

 

 

The gorgeous goddess with the smile that lights up rooms and hearts…

 

Our Chef extraordinaire took time out from her delicious food-making to paint a pot of her own…

 

 

Lady birds for good luck turned up on the top of this artists work….

 

…as you can see….

 

Mother and Daughter creating together……they have a vegie garden at home and the new Sunflowers might fill that garden one day! One single  seed births the seeds of many new flowers over one single season… 

 

…seeding the Vision is a journey of process, attention, watering and ….patience….

 

…all pots are sealed with varnish and the upper torso lean, with head titled upward is a spraying skill learnt after accidentally inhaling a nostril full of varnish dust on the first ever pot.  Interesting shadow cast on the ground there….

Mandalas as tools for Staff Training and Development…

The Mandala- the Circular form, which I have shared in other sections of my blog – is a great tool for inspiring right brain thinking and reflection during Staff training sessions.

As people engage with the rhythmic movement of adding colour and meaning to the individual black and white templates, the process is akin to a mind-massage that gives access to parts of the brain we have often lost touch with in this , predominantly analytical western system that has so much influence on how we Think and Create……or not.

Sadly many people are living their life with the belief of “I am not Creative”, in spite of the fact that we all started out as creative, imaginative, ‘magical’ children.
You can read a little story about what happens to the ‘magical child in exile’ by clicking here..

Feedback after the creativity based training often contains statements like “I was amazed at how much more information I absorbed even though i was not always looking up” and “thankyou for giving us permission to go in to our own creative space and contribute without having to sit still all day in the one position”...”wow…I am going to share these tools with my daughter and grandchildren”…

The indoctrination to sitting completely still, STOP fidgetings, eyes to the front “look at me when I’m talking to you!!!’…”stop day dreaming”…. model of learning and education has resulted in many people disconnecting from movement, flow, kinesthetic engagement and imagination that defines the Creative State…

Is it any wonder so many people feel let down by mainstream education and leave it believing absolutely that “I am not Creative”….Very sad! …..and not without significant mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health implications….

The following are samples of some of the work that was created during a series of Cultural Inclusivity Action Plan workshops.
The four themes that were central to the day were “Team” “Community” “Our Place” and “Balance”….you can see the theme is written on the Mandala and the individual creative input is an unique and diverse as the participants and the Community they serve….

We honour the traditional owners of this great land when we implement processes that ‘Aborginalise’ the western mindset by engaging with traditional cultural practices of art, creativity, story sharing, talking circles and….FUN! ….a long way from chairs lined up with backs to one another, sitting motionless for hours through slide shows, pie graphs and talking, talking, talking…;)

CREATIVITY WORKSHOPS ARE VERY DIFFERENT THAN THE ‘BORED ROOM” APPROACH..

OUR PLACE

TEAM

BALANCE IN THE WORKPLACE

Each Mandala has a developmental theme and is used as individual process, in the small group talking /action plan group and as a larger group we have poster size replicas which, by the end of the day…become the centre of action-plan installation art.

You can see how wonderful it is to create the ART of Vision / Action over the tired old butchers paper sheets that tend to be rolled away and disappeared forever once the workshop is over….

Ingalalla Falls south of Adelaide- A beautiful place on a wet and windy day…

My buddy Deanna and I were both a bit tired, a bit low on joi-de-vivre… We work in human services / personal development and we know that this kind of tired and hearing sadness all the time needs very specific treatment!

It requires packing the picnic basket, spending hours amongst Nature with a cup of tea in china mugs, accompanied by a piece of apple-crumble cheesecake from the Yankalilla bakery…. taking time out of the city away from the mobile phones waves and relentless traffic….noise traffic, mobile phone traffic, people traffic and the news, news, news…

Nothing else will remedy what only Nature offers the weary 21st Century gals!….(;-)

Here is where we went…and if you look really closely you can see the Spirits of Nature all around…

Ingalalla Falls…nestled in between hilly country that is green and clean and lush….

“I AM at Home with Peace and Prosperity”

This was the theme for our empowerment art work this week…to become comfortable with Peace and Prosperity when there has been a history of chaos and poverty….

I am ever amazed at the completely individual and unique creations that emerge from the same black and white template……..

The Winter of content…

It was raining yesterday afternoon and after the months of drought and over 10 days where the temperature reached 100oF a few months ago, the winter rains and green-sheen everywhere are very welcome in this desert state.

I was sitting under the back verandah with the two semi-homeless garden cats, Gabrielle- [Gabi] and her daughter Shima. You can see how gorgeous they are:

The garden was humming with rain drops and birds and leaves blowing down from the Cedar Trees
late autumn fall:

…and I remembered back to when I first moved in here and all I could see was a barren, dry patch of soil…

…..and how this piece of Mother Earths blank canvas taught me more about process, time, holding a vision, weeding and seeding, than I could ever have imagined when I first moved here during a trials-and-tribulations winter of discontent….

In our ‘outcomes’ driven, western society I learnt that the answers we are seeking about sustainable change and growth are to be found in Mother Nature’s process of Time, cycles and seasons….

……and how wonderful it is to create a room with out walls and a fireplace whose only chimney is the sky….

Adelaide in South Australia is traditionally named ‘Tandanya’ , home of the Red Kangaroo.

Living and growing and learning and sharing on traditional Aboriginal Land, Kaurna Country has its own special strand of environmental magic and possibility….As my good buddy Nungala reminds me:

“It can happen so much better and so much faster if you acknowledge the Ancestors and remember the Dreaming”…..

Drama Detox Unit open for Business…

DRAMA DE-TOX UNIT

A Cautionary Tale Dedicated to the recovering Dramaholic in all of us….well many of us.

This is a fictionally true transcript from Dramaholics Anonymous, held at a venue….and a venyou…. nearby………..

Trouble ~ “Hi my name is Trouble and I am a Dramaholic.

Person A ~Hi Trouble”
Person B ~”Welcome Trouble”
Person C ~ (Just nods head slightly…doesn’t like to welcome Trouble anymore)

Group Leader: “Welcome Trouble. It is so good you have decided to come along and we’d appreciate it if you would tell us a bit about yourself”

Trouble: “Well I was born into Trouble…my mama was a Drama Queen and my daddy was nowhere to be found.
Mama modelled Drama to us kids very well. She taught us to always pick the wrong kind of guy, make sure there was lots of chaos in our life before getting rid of him and then go out and find another one and get on with the whole dang thing again!”

Person A~ Praise the Lord I think we had the same mama
Person B~ Heavens above…I think I might be your mama
Person C~ silence….no longer even looks Trouble in the eye…

Group Leader“So what has made you decided to come to Dramaholics, Trouble?”

Trouble “Well there I was in the midst of wagging my finger at yet another person who seemed to just want to make my life more complicated..my latest boyfriend who proved to be just like the last three …and all of a suddenI looked up and saw my mama standing there in front of me”

Group Leader “Why was this a problem”?

Trouble “Well she has been dead for ten years but I tell you when I looked up in that bathroom mirror and saw my mamas familiar weary face and angry brow and recognised that disappointed look in her eye, barely concealing those unshed tears…….I KNEW I was in big Trouble!
I stood there looking in the mirror and remembered all the times I had fleshed out arguments in my life.
How many times I found myself bickering with people cause they were so wrong and I was so right and I KNEW I needed to make them see my point of view.
After all the Trouble in me had a very strong calling to point out to others their failings and how to correct themself so they would be just like me.
Then I remembered how many times I would get to a peaceful place and it felt REALLLL uncomfortable so I would start looking around and find someone to make a bit of Trouble with or criticise someone near to me for letting me down or not acting how I thought they should be acting!

Group Leader… “Well Trouble..you have come to the right place and the first thing we would like to do, after the big group hug , is give you a new name…((((((((00000))))))

So from now on we will all know you as:

“GrownUp!

”We reckon you have had enough Trouble for one life time and with your new insight…cause you have finally seen that you have been creating this Drama in your life for too long now…you earn your Brand New name…

Grown Up…..(blinking modest tears of appreciation and realistion how lonely she had been for so long whilst she was Trouble) “Well thankyou SO much for that…I am amazed that I only had to come here to Dramaholics once to finally really get the message……that when I let go of Trouble…then I really truly am all Grown Up!…

The End

The BE~ginning……

“Men occasionally stumble across the Truth but most pick themself up and hurry off as if nothing has happened”.

Hope your visit to Adelaide is a peaceful and productive one RW

“I breathe deeply”

“I release that which does not bring Peace to my Mind”….

“The Magical Child in Exile – Why Does the Creative Well Being Run Dry? ” is related to the “Drama Detox unit” and can be read by clicking on the dots here…………

Mandala

I made this Empowerment Mandala for our discussion on “Boundaries” in the women’s group…..

Each participant has a black and white copy as a way of ‘kick starting creativity and the use of symbols as an alternative to talk, talk, talk therapy……

Remember ‘Jonathon Livingston Seagull’, “I’m Okay , Your Okay” and Shatki Gawains ‘Creative Visualisation’? For the over 40’s it has been a looong read to get to today…

 

For those of us over 40….

Remember how the book stores once had very few Self Empowerment / alternate thinking  books? How Jonathon Livingstone Seagull inspired us to fly beyond the flock…and then “I’m Okay- Your Okay” came out…I was a teenager then and didn’t really understand it but carried it around for months like an affirmation of somewhere I would be one day!

Then there was the Primal Scream by Arthur Janov who decided we had every unshed tear and soul wound trapped in our body and the sale in beanbags quadrupled as therapists across the globe created little spots   for people to anguish-out their pain.

“One flew Over the Cuckoos nest ” let us all know that really, madness was quite okay and it was the drugs and Nurse Ratchetts of the world who were messing things up!

And then Shakti Gawain- once known by a much more western name caught onto the Science of Mind / New Thought teachings and packaged them in a cool and inviting format…”Creative visualisation” groups sprang up across the country and Affirmations became the newest key to making dreams come true!

Some of of us then did months / years of “Women who love too much”…”How to recognise a commitmentphobic man before he breaks your heart”…”Letters from Women who love too much” and “Ten Stupid Things Women do to Mess up their Life”……and STILL let another bad boy in because he was such an irresitable pattern to break…

Our bookshelves and the dusty boxes in the shed are an archival record of the Journey…and it continues ever onward …

Paulo Coehlo let us know that the Alchemist did not have to travel anywhere if only he had looked within…….in the Celestine Prophecy we were shown how control draaamas and Energy snatching is a way of life amongst the still-sleeping-humans…

Not to forget the maverick Richard Bandler who challenged the years of psychotherapy with something he called NLP- Neuro Linguistic Programming – where changing thought patterns and internal states became as easy as the title of his book – Using Your Brain for a Change…

Then there was the energiser bunny of the change-movement, inspired by Bandlers work…as Anthony Robbins bounced across the stage, altering states and appearing with Leeza Gibbons for years on the 2 am infomercials..

We have laid with tissues next to our Gratitude journals…we have loyally committed to ‘doing what it takes’..sometimes falling asleep witih crumpled notes to the Universe and a pile of ‘must read books’ next to our  beds…

We have bought exercise books for our one-person Soul class exercises…and meditation tapes back when there were no cds/ dvds/ and mp3’s…

For some the Bible has been a consistent presence but as we have seen with the Biblical wars across the net, it is a book not without polarising emotions…

Then we expanded to reading blogs, downloading pods and vods…and Skyping and Cellphone texting…on and on and on the learning and growing and communicating expands…

Phew! Aren’t we a wonderful group of Soul School Earth students and aren’t we all blessed that the fruits of our fellow travellers and Soul School class mates becomes the nourishment and ponderings for our own journey…that still has infinitity to go……

Some days I browse in the second hand books stores and come across “I’m okay , You’re okay” or a dusty copy of “My Mother Myself” and turn the page of the old fashioned cover with a deep sense of nostalgia and gratitiude that in this dawning of the Age of Aquarius…the Age of Enlightement… we are free to CHOOSE our Soul food and each year produces more and more nourishment and food for thought….( and Yes, the astrology, psychic phenomena, astral travelling, tribal wisdom, aura reading, Silva mind development, Louise Hay -Healing empowerment books should also get a mention in the Archive…

 

Oh yes….some more name I have forgotten…

John Bradshaw, the dyanamic son of an alcoholic Father showing us how the sickness of the parent is visited upon the child. I still have a 10 part video series we used to use in workshops.. The local  free to air community tv station had the tapes playing regularly through out the week for over a year and my mother did one of the exercises that lead her down the corridor within and into her own Awakening…

We still joke that the videos should not be watched alone as it was a frightening experience for her to meet her sad, lonely little girl whose daddy never came home from the war at 11 oclock at night with her husband snoozing on the couch next to her…

I did not read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” or “Fire in the Belly” and “Iron John” but the caring sharing guys who were a part of my life and fellow shelter workers would head off to their mens weekends with Sam Keen and Robert Bly ‘mens business’ books tucked in their back packs…

I also forgot to mention one book that impacted my priveleged white-girl world enormously when I was just 13 – “Black Like Me”, the diary of a person who changed the color of their skin and shared the reality of racism they experienced having never known it before… in order to make us white-folk really think about the set up we had created……and of course Jane Elliotts “Blue Eyes” , I bought the book, recorded the Oprah Shows and passed on the information whnever and where ever I could…

And how could I forget “Rolling Thunder” Doug Boyds acocunt of the life of the amazing medicine man Shaman who lived in the world of quantum phyiscs, time travel and communiion with Nature…

I flew out of my childhood under Jonathons Livingston Seagulls wide wings…..

 

Sigh….it was a time of greater silence in the world when the skies were empty of microwares, sattellites, cell phones and the zillion megawatts of electricity that fils the airwaves in these early days of the 21st century…

I feel a little nostalgic for my Frankincense , Patchouli and beads and …..oh…hang on………that’s right..I am still wearing them…… 

 

 

What were the books that shaped your travels ……………and have you bequeathed your library to a fitting new home once your travels in this body have passed?

 

 

ScareCrows and Flowering Eucalypts…

Sal and I were out walking yesterday and discussing a project we are about to embark on.
We came upon a flowering Eucalypt (see below) and Sal drew on his background in botany to offer the analogy of the Flowering tree as a symbol for our creative ventures:
1. There needs to be a dynamic interaction
2. There are stages of development from the seeding to the bud forming to the Flowering…and along the way some of the buds may never Flower.
3. After the manifestation of the Flowers they will die off to give way to the new and ever changing cycle that is always influenced by the weather and inner / outer interplay.

I love the beautiful pink~red Flowers and the sunlight through the tree…it was a very ‘in tune with Nature’ aspect of our project conversation!

Then we came upon a sight I haven’t seen for a few years.
An urban ScareCrow! He is guarding a delicious Nectarine Tree that is only a few days away from fully ripe fruit…which of course the birds flying around the suburbs view as part of their daily smorgasboard!
A whole flock of Lorikeets and Galahs have been eating the Cootamundra wattles seeds in our front yard since late November and last week a huge family of Magpies discovered the dry pods on the ground and have been feasting on them since.
Love the fake-predator bird flying above the tree and oh~so~not~scary expression on ScareCrows face!