MettaKnowledge for Peace, one of the co-sponsors of The Art of Surviving, offers educational workshops and lectures on The Art of Surviving. Rachel Mann, owner of MettaKnowledge for Peace, can also provide trainings to assist organizations and communities to parlay the exhibit and its contents in service of public education.  Organizations and agencies can also make special requests for workshops and lectures that fit their needs.  All workshops engage participants in action-oriented activities and interact with and use the art and poetry from the exhibit to facilitate personal exploration, discussion, creativity, and community building. For more information on upcoming offerings, click here.

Some offerings include:

The Art of Surviving: A Day-long Resource-Building Workshop for Survivors, Activists, Artists, Poets, and Scholars

This workshop engages participants in an exploration of the core questions of The Art of Surviving project and invites them to make new connections, develop new resources, and expand their understanding of the impact of and the potential for healing all of us from sexual violence and other traumas.

• What is the “art of surviving”?
• How do the humanities give us new understandings of the problem of sexual violence in our society and for the individual?
• How can the humanities help us understand the spiritual dimensions of sexual violence and contribute to individual and collective healing through expression and community action and reflection?
• How do people use self-expression to survive and heal?
• What are the historical, cultural and spiritual patterns among human beings as they seek to heal from sexual violence?
• In what ways can the humanities help us end sexual violence in the world as a whole?

For a report on the activities and outcomes of our first workshop on this topic, click here.

Exploring Dimensions of Spirituality on the Front Lines: A Workshop of Personal Exploration for Professionals, Volunteers, and Survivors

In this workshop, we will explore how the experience of violence often opens up in ourselves and others a yearning for a more spiritual way of seeing the world and life. We will examine how and why this happens and how to harness it in ourselves and our clients in the process of forging greater peace. In the process, we will learn how to talk about religion and spirituality in a way that is respectful of differences in beliefs.

The Art of Surviving Compassion Fatigue

In this workshop, we explore the meaning of compassion and its manifestations in our own lives and work. We explore why we have compassion fatigue and how to address it constructively so we can continue our work with a sense of energy, hope, and optimism.