Description

We warmly invite you to join Sandra Barefoot, Executive Director of The Forgiveness Project, and Angela Findlay, artist, author and storyteller, for a creative collage workshop exploring the relationships that shape our lives.

Using the art of collage, we will reflect on our connections with family, friends and community, exploring where we experience harmony, where tensions may exist, and how we might begin to build bridges of understanding and peace.

A range of materials from photographs and magazines to natural objects such as flower petals will be available to inspire your own unique creation. No creative experience is needed.

Good to Know

• All art materials will be provided and no previous collage experience is needed, just curiosity and a willingness to explore.
• You’re welcome to bring along any personal materials you’d like to include in your collage.
• Please bring an apron or wear clothing that you don’t mind getting messy, as we will be working with glue.
• Light refreshments will be provided.
• We will be recording participant thoughts and feedback for impact measures.

About the Facilitators

Sandra Barefoot

Executive Director, The Forgiveness Project

Sandra has over 30 years of experience in leadership, particularly in creative consultancy, programme management, group facilitation, research, and mentoring, with specialism in multi-disciplinary arts practices.

Sandra’s leadership experience spans a wide breadth of practice inclusive of NHS and community health, national Theatre, Deaf and Disabled Arts practices, Early Years and Primary Education, and Criminal Justice. Over the past 16 years, Sandra has worked closely with our storytellers to lead, adapt, and manage our award-winning prison programme RESTORE. As a joint research fellow with the Griffin Society and Cambridge University’s Department of Criminology, Sandra has researched the relationship between shame and resilience with women of lived experience of prison, and subsequently co-created a training resource exploring how practitioners can develop a Shame Informed Approach in practice.

With a passion to embed grassroots practices in diverse communities, Sandra’s focus as Executive Director is to nurture rich and meaningful collaborations with inspiring community leaders, storytellers, peers, and academics to offer the world hope, restoration and healing.

Angela Findlay

Artist, Author, Speaker and Storyteller

Angela Findlay is one of our storytellers and a long-term collaborator with The Forgiveness Project, working in our prison programme RESTORE, and contributing to both live and online events.

She is an Anglo-German artist, public speaker and author of In My Grandfather’s Shadow (Penguin, 2022). Her career teaching art in prisons in England and Germany gave her first-hand insight into the transformative power of the arts in rehabilitation, trauma recovery and education. It also informed two decades of research into her own German family history and the intergenerational impact of trauma, guilt and shame arising from the Second World War. 

For more than a decade, Angela has lectured and written on these themes, as well as on the role of the arts in Germany’s distinctive post-war culture of remembrance, memorialisation and reconciliation. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and a Diploma in Artistic Therapy, specialising in colour. Her paintings have been widely exhibited in Britain and internationally, while In My Grandfather’s Shadow continues to reach readers around the world.

She is currently studying Systemic Constellations and creating new art, and you can find out more on her websites angelafindlaytalks.com and angelafindlay.com.

What Participants Say

“Thank you each and everyone. I feel soothed and also strong after our discussion!” – Carrie Supple, Forgiveness Café Participant  

“Thank you so much for the meeting today. EXACTLY what I needed to save me from the big black hole that I felt I was in. Now I see some light, hope and a glimmer of joy in the essence of being. I really have had a seismic shift in perspective which is allowing me to approach my pain in a totally new way.” – Forgiveness Café Participant  

“A safe space held with awareness…where one gathers pearls of wisdom.” – Forgiveness Café Participant  

“Beautiful discussion!!” – Lisa Rickert, Forgiveness Café Participant

“It was a real pleasure to be able to participate in the cafe and I look forward to further such opportunities.” – Forgiveness Café Participant

“I am so grateful to have had a short time in this group. Forgiveness to me is a conscious decision to add peace to the world, even when some instincts might ask us to be angry and vengeful. It is a process that I start anew over and over. For me, forgiveness is personal, and it is also radical. I imagine what our society would be like if we all, even sometimes, made the decision to face our hurts with grace, love, and truth telling.” – Perla Carlota Hatch, Forgiveness Café Participant