(un)settling our spirituality: online art therapy workshop

Sunday, September 25 – 12:00 pm PT | 1:00 pm MT | 2:00 pm CT | 3:00 pm ET | 4:00 pm AT (2.5 hours) (2.5 hours)

To join the National Sunday Service (the information on this page is for the art therapy workshop following the service), please go to the Unsettled and Unafraid event page.

Following “Unsettled and Unafraid,” a national service honouring the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, join us for “(un)settling our spirituality,” a one-session online art therapy experience for Canadian Unitarian Universalists (UUs) seeking to understand how colonization has shaped their identity and spirituality.

This session will give you a taste of how the creative arts can offer opportunities to connect with ourselves, our ancestors and the land while building resilience and strengthening our capacity to engage in the work of reconciliation and decolonization.
The process is similar to that of small group ministry: our learning comes from our own reflections and from witnessing the reflections of others (this is not a lecture!).
There will be a break within the sessions when you will be invited to turn away from the screen and write or make art or take some photos on your phone.
This experience is about the process of making and the insights that come from it. No art experience is necessary.
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Registration and Consent
Everyone who attends the national worship “unsettled and unafraid” is welcome to attend the workshop. Please click here to register.
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Supplies
You will be asked to play with words and to make things. How you do this is up to you. For example, “playing with words” could mean writing with a pen, composing on a computer, or dictating into a phone. Supplies for “making” might include pen and paper, western-style art supplies (felt pens, pastels, paints, etc.), found objects from your recycling box, natural materials, the objects on your desk or kitchen table, or digital tools such as a camera or a drawing program.
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Co-Facilitators
Carey and Karen are student art therapists in the Indigenized Art Therapy Diploma at the WHEAT Institute (Winnipeg). They are offering this group as part of their practicum requirement. As this is part of their practicum, Carey and Karen will invite participants to send them photos of their art work, which may be shared with their respective supervisors (no identifying information will be shared).

Carey Jeanette Sinclair
Originally from Pukatawagan, Manitoba, raised in the north till I was a teen, then relocated to Winnipeg at the age of 12.
I am currently in the Indigenized Art Therapy Program, I also have a certificate in Mental Health in The Community, through Lakeland College, advanced degree from the University of Manitoba, Indigenous Health and Wellness in the community through the university of Manitoba, I am also a reiki master, ceremonial person. I am also in the process of being a trauma informed yoga teacher, and death doula.
I have worked all my working career in the community and enjoy working with people. I have learned all my lessons in life being who I was and taking that to walk with others on their journey in life. 

Karen Fraser Gitlitz (she/hers)
I am a person of English, Scottish and French ancestry, born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. For the past decade, I have been living as a guest and treaty relative in Treaty 6 Territory, traditional lands of the Nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), Salteaux and Dakota and the Homeland of the Métis.
Both my mother and my grandmother were artists. I began my working life as an Art Historian. While doing that work, I heard a call to a different type of service to the community, and I trained to become a clergy person in the Unitarian Universalist tradition.
It was this work that brought me and my partner, Paul Gitlitz, to Saskatoon, SK.
I have a beautiful Son who is a young adult, who is the caregiver of my beautiful granddaughter Star.
I was raised catholic till I was about 18, stopped going to mass, learned traditional ways of being and other ways of being. Recently started looking at the church ways of being, and accepting some of the teachings. Accepting that we all practice in different ways and to be more patient with myself.

Seeking to better understand the connections between art, spirituality and social justice, I enrolled in art therapy diploma at the WHEAT Institute in Winnipeg. I believe creative expression can help us express ourselves, gain insight, and connect (or reconnect) to our sources of strength. When we walk a healing path—mind, spirit, heart, and body—we are healing our ancestors and our communities, as well as ourselves.
I am in the process of unlearning the ways of colonization. I intend my practice to include an anti-racist lens and welcome clients of all backgrounds, identities, genders, and sexualities.