Blogtown, PDX

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Artsy Tonight: DIY, Portland Listening Party

Posted by Alison Hallett on Thu, Mar 20 at 1:11 PM

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Tonight at the Waypost, a listening party for the newest installment of DIY, Portland, a monthly radio show and podcast that highlights revolutionary DIY projects. Tonight’s RACC-supported episode explores “art as a survival mechanism—looking at how art helps people to overcome or deal with challenges such as incarceration, homelessness and disabilities both mental and physical.” Guests include Adrienne Fritze of Working Artists (the photo above is from a project she organized while working as an art therapist at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility) and young artists from p:ear.

I’ve never been to a “listening party” before, so I asked producer/host Julie Sabatier what to expect:

A listening party is kind of like an audio gallery opening. People get together, order food or drinks or whatever and sit and listen (it’s a half hour show) and then conversations usually come out of that and continue on into the evening with people sharing their ideas with each other in an informal way (not like a facilitated discussion or anything). I’ve been doing this for a few months and I’m still trying to figure out what to have people do while they listen, but usually they just sit and eat or drink quietly.

Might I suggest setting up a light on a screen and making shadow puppets? That’s quiet, and everybody loves a shadow puppet. I can make Richard Nixon and a bunny. Or how about a back rub circle, like in high school? (Remember those skeezy adolescent back rubs that either focused suspiciously on the sides of your ribcage, or kind of crept over the top of your shoulders? Oh, dudes, you weren’t fooling anybody.) Or, you know, drinking quietly works too.

DIY Portland Listening Party, Waypost Coffeeshop, 3120 N Williams, 7 pm

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Comments

Hey, thanks for the plug! I hope to see you there with your best Richard Nixon shadow puppet ready to rock.

Posted by Julie Sabatier | March 20, 2008 2:02 PM

I want a ribcage rub. You could charge a cover for that.

Posted by Leviethan | March 20, 2008 2:46 PM

I just want to clear something up so there isn’t any misunderstanding about the work I did out at Coffee Creek, or do with any group under the care of a public institution (Juvenile Detention, the PACE Program, the YWCA transitional housing program, White Shield, etc.). We call programs like Empty & Meaningless: the Box Project (E&M) an Applied Arts Program, or a Therapeutic Arts Program – not Art Therapy – because the program is facilitated by a “normal” person rather than a board certified therapist.

I’ve training as an ontological coach – and the project incorporates many of the conversation-based tools used in the coaching profession, however I do not have any training in psychology or psychiatry. The therapy parts before and after my workshops at Coffee Creek were handled by the Psychologists, Counselors and Psychiatric staff – I just got to facilitate this amazing program and they used its transformative power to further the work they were already doing with the inmates.

I know that this may seem to be a slight distinction, but I know that were there any problems in the room that dealt with a client having a psychotic break of some sort, or becoming overwhelmed by an emotional monsoon, I would not have been equipped to handle it. The amazing staff who were in the room while we explored E&M were trained for just those kinds of situations and could handle them.

So although I had the honor and privilege of leading the workshop I'd developed, I would not have been able to do it without the unwavering support and presence of the treatment teams out there.

Kudos go to those folks for the amazing and difficult work they do with the helping the incarcerated change their lives. And thank goodness that I get to remain merely an artist who is damn good at creating arts-based programs that change lives for the better. ;-)

Posted by Adrienne Fritze | March 26, 2008 12:42 AM