Winter Social 2011

To close out 2011, we invited Arti Mehta to facilitate an amazing workshop for our Winter Social. After a delicious lunch (catered by a local restaurant), Arti led us through two main sets of activities:

• Mindfulness through a group relaxation exercise, where Arti led us through a guided imagery session
• Mural exercise where we collectively made art reflecting on what we did in 2011 in terms of self care, and what we are hoping to do in 2012 in terms of self care
• Sachet-making, where we wrote intentions for ourselves for 2012, and then made beautiful little sachets to keep in our pillows at home, or on our desks at work. Arti gave us the option of putting lavender seeds or oil into the sachets (East Mississauga CHC is a scent-free space, so we were conscious about which spaces the lavender would be used)
  

Arti Mehta is a brown, queer, woo-loving, crafty, chronically ill, femme, radical performance artist, community builder and glitter enthusiast. She helped organize the community accountability learning to action group for two-spirited, queer and trans folks in Toronto, a group committed to community accountability and transformative justice principles as a strategy to build safer communities and end the prison industrial complex. (bio taken from event listing for Building Resilient Communities: A Community Accountability Workshop from May 2010)

HaR members Crystal and Rita; our facilitator Arti

  

Crystal and Rita getting their craft on!

Our facilitator Arti, explaining the intricacies of sachet-making to HaR member Muna, while Tennile (another HaR member) gets right into it

A small selection of the materials Arti brought

Hands at work: Rita, Ann, Arti, Muna, Tennile