Pamela Hastings, world-renowned doll maker, artist, writer, and teacher guides the reader through a Transformative Process using paper and cloth doll making, with lots of patterns and examples to create fast and simple dolls for fun and life change.
In The Healing Doll Way, Barb Kobe shares stories and images from her transformative experience becoming a healing doll artist, as well as those of many of her students and peers. The book also guides you through the process of making healing dolls for yourself. The act of making a doll can take you through a process of imagination, recovery, and growth. You do not need to be an expert at dollmaking-or artmaking, for that matter-to experience the power of this kind of work. This dollmaking process invites and encourages you to explore a range of perceptions and emotions, and in doing so, reach a deeper level of understanding and acceptance of yourself.
The creative strategies in Design for Transformative Learning offer a playful and practical approach to learning from and adapting to a rapidly changing world. Seeing continuous learning as more than the periodic acquisition of new skills this book presents a design-led approach to revising the stories we tell ourselves, unlearning old habits and embracing new practices. This book maps learning opportunities across the contemporary landscape, narrating global case studies from K12, higher education, design consultancies and researchers. It offers narrative context, best practices and emergent strategies for how designers can partner in the important work of advancing a lifetime of learning. Committed to driving sustained transformation this is a playbook of practical moves for designing memory-making, perspective-shifting, hands-on learning encounters. The book braids stories from design practice with theories of change, transformative learning literature, cognitive and social psychology research, affect theory and Indigenous knowing. Positioning the COVID-19 pandemic as a moment to question what was previously normalised, the book proposes playful strategies for seeding transformational change. The relational practice at the core of Design for Transformative Learning argues that if learning is to be transformative the experience must be embodied, cognitive and social. This book is an essential read for design and social innovation researchers, facilitators of community engagement and co-design workshops, design and arts educators and professional learning designers. It is a useful primer for K12 teachers, organisational change practitioners and professional development facilitators curious to explore the intersection of design and learning. The companion website for the book is a practical resource that connects to many of the projects, activities, methods, designers and stories introduced in the book. The site includes links to downloadable colour diagrams, templates for digital learning encounters, and additional reflective narratives on transformative experiences. www.designingtransformativelearning.com
To most, the word doll conjures up an image of a toy meant to be played with by little girls. But, as author and teacher Cassandra Light explains, while dolls do symbolize a sense of play, they are not necessarily toys, nor are they always meant for children. As objects of our creative imagination, dolls can bring us back to our childhood if we let them and "perhaps bestow upon us a future we hadn't imagined". It was upon this premise that she founded her successful Way of the Doll, School of Sacred Art in Berkeley, California, over fifteen years ago. Each year over seventy-five students, ranging in ages from six to eighty-five, meet weekly to create a life-sized doll of their own from porcelain and found materials. Few of the men and women have any artistic experience, and their backgrounds vary greatly. They unite for one common purpose: to discover and share their own personal story, whether it is one of joy or pain. The results, which are exhibited each year, are astounding. In this elegant and inspiring volume, Cassandra Light chronicles the history of her remarkable school, revealing the stories of many students, as well as her own. Her warm, honest voice is accompanied by nearly 100 spectacular, color photographs showcasing the best of these incredible dolls. Complete with essays by Stephen Mitchell and Jean Shinoda Bolen and the words of the students themselves, Way of the Doll is a testament to courage, hope, and the power of the human spirit.
Original research and examples from artists illustrate how different textile-based art approaches can provide therapeutic outlets for women with a complete variety of life experiences. The psychology of this therapeutic approach is explained as well as explanations of specific techniques and suggestions for practise with a wide range of clients.
A beautifully illustrated cover edition of Rumer Godden's classic story about friendship and family, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. When little Nona is sent from her sunny home in India to live with her relatives in chilly England, she is miserable. Then a box arrives for her in the post and inside, wrapped up in tissue paper, are two little Japanese dolls. A slip of paper says their names are Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. Nona thinks that they must feel lonely too, so far away from home. Then Nona has an idea – she will build her dolls the perfect house! It will be just like a Japanese home in every way. It will even have a tiny Japanese garden. And as she begins to make Miss Happiness and Miss Flower happy, Nona finds that she is happier too.
A TOR.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: A fairy-tale-infused love story between two lonely souls—with “distinctly Gothic overtones and a Nabokovian narrator” (Locus). “The literary equivalent of getting lost in a steampunk-inspired, cutting edge fashion show . . . while you dream of places you’ve never seen.” —Book Riot Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive, but graceful, unique and with surprising depths. Perhaps that’s why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector’s magazine. Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped; and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her. On his journey through the old towns of England he reads the fairy tales of Ewa Chaplin—potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice—to remain alone with their painful pasts or break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.
Artful Grief is a decade long study of loss by an art therapist, in the aftermath of her daughters suicide. On October 11, 2001, Sharon received a phone call in the middle of the night from the New York City Police Department telling her that her seventeen year old daughter Kristin, had fallen from the roof of her college dormitory. So began her journey into the labyrinth of unspeakable grief. As the ?rst year drew to a close she found no comfort in traditional therapy, and no solace in spoken or written words. In surrender to her inner art therapists guidance, she began to create collages. She cut and tore images out of magazines and glued them on various size paper. The paper was a safe and sacred container, receptive to the fullness of emotion, story and paradox. Over time there was transformation and healing. Artful Grief A creative roadmap through violent dying and grief. A dose of soul medicine for survivors. A way to retrieve the pieces of a shattered life, with paper, scissors and glue. A resourceful tool for those suffering with complicated grief and/or PTSD. A place for the unspeakable to be seen and heard. A process to quiet the mind and open the heart. A visual experience of trauma images as illustrations of hope. A sample of prophetic dreams and meditations that are illuminating. A heartfelt sharing of intimate secrets for understanding and compassion. A surprising grief gift that is inspiring.
Doll draws relationships among the ideas advanced in chaos theory, Piagetian epistemology, cognitive theory, and the work of Dewey and Whitehead. In this book on the post-modern perspective on the curriculum, the author asserts that the post-modern model of organic change is not necessarily linear, uniform, measured and determined, but is one of emergence and growth, made possible by interaction, transaction, disequilibrium and consequent equilibrium. Transformation, not a set course, the book argues, should be the rule, and open-endedness is an essential feature of the post-modern framework. In the book, the author envisages a curriculum in which the teacher's role is not causal, but transformative. The curriculum is not the race course, but the journey itself; metaphors can be more useful than logic in generating dialogue in the community; and educative purpose, planning and evaluation is flexible and focused on process, not product. “Scholarly, yet direct and to the point, [Doll’s] ideas make sense to front line educators in the real world of today’s schools.” —Kenneth Graham, Seaford Union Free School District