Words at Work, a writing workshop to enrich corporate work
Home
E-Mail
Dorian
PAST WORKSHOPS
Browse here to see the kind of workshops people have enjoyed in the past.
If any one of them catches your fancy, contact Dorian to arrange a repeat...
in your area!
Letters to the Divine:
a Writing and Lettering Workshop
(with calligrapher Anne-Marie Moore)
We explore our creativity and imagination. Write poems, praise passages, songs, stories, prayers, chants and calligraphy them. Explore the art of letters as a ritual. Join your letters to those of the mystics of every faith who have celebrated the divine
Your Personal Myth: Writing yourself Alive
A Life Story Workshop
We are all endowed as story-tellers. There is a mystic in every one of us.
Matthew Fox.
Joseph Campbell suggests we are in search of the experiences that make us more alive. Writing is one of them. In this workshop we explore our creativity and imagination and find the words to tell those stories to make them more alive. We travel in search of our personal myths- the stories that energise our lives. The workshop also focuses on how to be present in our writing and engage the reader.
Enchanted Forests and Castles
Writing your life as a Fairy Tale
Fairy Tales are human masks invested with desire
Are you interested in breaking spells? Intrigued by the number three?
Finding frog or royal metaphors for your journey?
Wanting to change your bread-crumbs-in-the-forest reality?
Engage with creatures and helping/hindering spirits?
Wondering what "Once upon a time" and "happily ever after" means?
Then welcome to the world of fairy tale.
This workshop is aimed at anyone who wishes to explore her/his life story through fairy tale symbols. While the tales we know best feature children, other fairy tales feature mid-life or elderly protagonists.
We consider the wonder, energy and structure of fairy tales (some of them forgotten) and the power of symbols to enchant, challenge and transform our lives.
Tasting Tomorrow:
an evening of collage and word making...
Create a collage of pictures that interest or attract you
and then learn to write its story -
(re)discovering your dreams, hopes and aspirations along the way.
Why YOU should attend:
1. to think "outside the box"
2. to sift through random thoughts and create focus points and goals for 2005 and beyond
3. to get both the left and right brain working (detail and creativity combined)
4. to learn new skills in all spheres of your life
5. to HAVE FUN!
The River Journey - using images to enrich your writing
Keep writing in the dark.
Words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again
Denise Levertov
We are forever comparing. ("My love is like a red red rose.") And when we compare, we give birth to relationships expressed in words i.e. to imagery.
This workshop is about using imagery in our writing of life stories, fiction, poetry and drama. An image is a bolt of energy from the writing blue. It's about developing a new way of seeing that opens to adventure. For images are about relationships, connections and the unexpected. We consider how words create new realities.
Writing in the Wilderness - A Wilderness Retreat
On this retreat you explore your life stories through your connection to nature. We draw images and symbols from natural life and the landscape around There will be time for silence, bird watching and for dreaming.
A Book of Nights and Days - Keeping a Journal
And you, go into yourself,
become a ruby mine,
open to the gifts of the sun
Rumi
The word journal and journey come from the same source, the French word for day.
When we practice daily (and nightly) writing, we pay attention to the present moment. This raises our awareness as we enter the world of mystery and miracle. Such writing maps the future and draws it towards our lips.
Communication Intelligence:
Making Words Work in the Workplace
Winning Strategies for Your Career - A Workshop which could Change Your Life!
"We are excited about offering this unique programme to YOU the Office Professional!. It is specifically in response to those who are committed to their own self-development; and who motivate their attendance with the objective of learning and growing their own capacity."
How many words do you use every day at work?
These words help or hinder communication within the office and with your clients.
This workshop raises your speaking and listening CQ (communication intelligence), improves your confidence and your ability to communicate.
At Home with Words and People
Want to speak in Public?
Be relaxed unstressed?
Find your voice?
Create your Story - Craft your Writing
Peter Elbow (Writing with Power) compares creating to sailing into the blue beyond. He likens crafting to plotting our way home to the harbour. In this workshop you sail home, balancing what is said with what is implied. You encourage the creativity of the reader as you seek to be present in the text and find your voice.
Write that Book!
Now is the time to start that book that has been hiding inside you for too long. This mini workshop morning will show you how.
Spirit, Myth and Archetype
My task of tasks is to discover what myth I am living.
Carl Jung
In this workshop we explore our life stories in relation to the patterns that lie beneath the surface. The workshop offers insights into what myths and archetypes are and how they influence our lives.
We work in creativity, imagination and words. We use writing as a means of opening new ways of being and seeing.
Who should attend?
This workshop is for anyone who wants to
write creatively
explore how imagination changes reality
understand their lives at a deeper level
change the story they are living
replenish their power and energy
Writing and illustrating for children
Dorian works with world-class illustrator, Marjorie van Heerden
This workshop explores the edges of conversation between text and illustration.
Beginner writers for children or writer's who don't illustrate are welcome.
The Bigger You: Writing Longing and Belonging
I am not I. I am the one walking beside me.
Jiminez
When we think of a relationship, most of us think of relating to other people a lover, a spouse, a child, a friend. But what about the relationship with the person we have known longest - ourselves -? Can writing open to a lifelong love affair with yourself?
This workshop explores 'the companion self.' That part of me that accompanies all I do the part that Carl Jung called the twin. As Ray Bradbury, the writer, suggests "I do not write. The other me demands emergence constantly." But who are 'the other me's? And how do I find them? The workshop attempts to answer these questions.
Family and Ancestors: Giving our Stories as Gifts
One day we too will be ancestors. Our stories will be gifts for our families . In this workshop we connect to our creativity and imagination and write these stories. The idea of family includes not only blood but our spiritual tradition, culture and the line of those who have influenced us. The workshop also touches on healing the family tree.
My Life, my Death:
A Writing and Story-telling Workshop
with Peter Fox, co-author of Dying, A Practical Guide for the Journey
Everyman I will go and thee and be thy Guide
(Death, from a Medieval Play)
We're constantly in the flow of life and death. This workshop explores these two twin energies that accompany us on our journey of transformation. We discover those experiences that bring us a sense of aliveness and an acceptance of the mystery. We celebrate our life and befriend our death.
Myths, stories and poetry are our guides for the day as we create and craft our stories
This workshop will be of help to those who
are training to be counsellors
attend to the dying
are dying and wish to reflect on their lives
are grieving and seeking healing
wish to remember loved ones and pass on their stories.
Peter Fox is the spiritual director of St Luke's Hospice. He is co-author of the recently published Dying, A Practical Guide for the Journey. He lectures in the field of grief and loss.
Words, You and your Story:
A Creative Writing Workshop
This mini-workshop is about getting in touch with the writer inside you. We explore our creativity and imagination and find the words to tell those stories to make them more alive. The workshop also focuses on how to be present in your writing, find your voice and engage the reader.
... for beginners and for those who wish to reconnect to words
... people working on life stories, poetry, fiction and articles will benefit.
In a Nutshell: How to Write a Quick as a Wink Story
A newspaper once ran a 50 word story competition. Now you hear of the genre Flash Fiction. The workshop shows you how to build a life story hut, a fiction hut, with only a few stones. Making every stone count.
Zen, Men, Breath and Words
During this weekend we live and breathe as a brotherhood of men. As we befriend each other, we explore how meditation and words help us to be present in ourselves, our relationships, our loving and fathering, work, play, health and our re-creation. We take as guide the poets, monks, and mystics. We write and walk our talk. Beginner men whatever age- are welcome.
How do we grow a text, shape it give it form, create art out of our scribblings and first drafts? Make it more alive? How do we involve our readers? This workshop will show you how to grow your writing in a creative, organic way.
Beginner writers are welcome. Bring copies of texts in progress if you wish.
The River Journey:
Late Winter Writing Retreat at Vaaloewer
I do not know much about gods; but the river Is a strong brown god
T S Eliot
On this retreat you explore your life stories through your connection to nature. We draw images and symbols from the river and the landscape around it. We create and craft our writing journey. There will be time for silence, bird watching and for dreaming.
Sandy Drew, who hosts this weekend, also runs Spiritual Journey workshops.
She has been on spiritual pilgrimages to Egypt, Alaska, Nepal and Tibet.
Hiking and Writing in the Helderberg
(with Bob Commin)
We hike and write (not at the same time) up the Helderberg. Overnight at a hut.
There is something about moving feet along a path and moving words across a page. Is it rhythm? A left and right brain jogging?
The Helderberg Writing Escape
Summer Writing School
An annual event in Somerset West in November -
featured in South Africa Writing Vol 2 April 06
Johanna Castro and I have created the Helderberg School of Writing. Johanna is an international freelance journalist who coaches in the genres of magazine writing, travel writing and copywriting. This extravaganza - our first 5 day joint venture - hopes to attract both local and international writers. We'll be writing and mentoring at a wine farm and in the Helderberg Nature Reserve. The escape will offer five days of exploration and discovery.
Includes:
Tuition
One-on-one mentoring
One email follow-up consultation
Files and a surprise gift for writers
Fine writing company
Most meals
Nature reserve admission
Dine with the sea in your face
Accomodation available at reasonable rates nearby at B&Bs in Somerset West, Gordon's Bay or Strand
The Halo and the Noose: the Power of Story-listening and Story-telling in Business Life
Words at Work, a writing workshop to enrich corporate work -
Expanding the life of the one who goes to work, expands the work.
Men, Women and Masks - with Bob Commin
The true purpose of masks is not concealment but transformation.
A culture of masks is one that understands the process of metamorphosis
Salman Rushdie
This journey involves mask making, writing, story-telling, poetry and land art. We explore the masks that we wear in relation to each other. Over this weekend men meet men, women meet women and then men and women meet in dialogue. We will seek in nature items to adorn our masks. Please bring crayons, pastels, glue, masking tape.
Bobotie, Bosman and Boerewors
It is not the story that counts. It's the way you tell it (Oom Schalk Lourens)
Bosman classics and traditional South African boerekos. Yvonne Holmes hosts this evening of South African Stories and Cuisine.
This workshop is about writing that book that has been hiding inside you for too long. Writing is about a conversation with yourself and with others. An exchange of energies. Writing is a skill not talent.
