Why animation?

‘If you can’t find a way of telling your story, your story will tell you.’ (Stephen Grosz)

Many people we work with in a variety of settings often feel that their lives are out of control, in chaos, that, indeed their story is telling them. Stop-frame animation offers a chance for people to not only tell their story but re-make it and re-fashion it in a way that they choose.

Van Der Kolk says, ‘We have discovered that helping victims of trauma find the words to describe what has happened to them is profoundly meaningful, but usually it is not enough.’

However, with animation, this is not describing their story as they would in an assessment, interview or consultation, but more of an embodied telling that involves making, manipulating, imagining, performing and remembering. It is a physical, step by step process that gives directorial and creative control to the storyteller. Participants can choose the story they tell, they can mix fact and fiction, change the outcome of the story (thereby regaining control of it) and make something they might be proud of.

This still under-used medium offers another set of tools for art therapists working with people in the midst of chaotic and traumatic narratives, and has the potential to be powerful, while also safe.

What you will learn

By completing the course, you will:

• make your own stop-frame animation film
• make and manipulate puppets to animate
• begin to take this methodology into your clinical practice
• understand how this medium can facilitate difficult and traumatic narratives.

Tutor:

Tony Gammidge