Alumni Portraits
Voices of CREATE Graduates
~ Celebrating 20 years of Expressive Arts Therapy Training in Toronto ~
Edited by Nicole Arends, this book features the stories of CREATE Institute graduates where they share their learning, experiences, triumphs and trials and express the impact that the expressive arts have had on their lives and careers.
Click here to read the book.
Click here to read about Valerey Lavergne
Click here to read about Samantha Sherer
Click here to read about Terri Roberton
Edited by Nicole Arends, this book features the stories of CREATE Institute graduates where they share their learning, experiences, triumphs and trials and express the impact that the expressive arts have had on their lives and careers.
Click here to read the book.
Click here to read about Valerey Lavergne
Click here to read about Samantha Sherer
Click here to read about Terri Roberton
Norma Araiza
“Becoming an Expressive Arts Therapist changed my life, both artistically, as well as personally,” said alumni of The CREATE Institute, Norma Araiza. However, the journey to discover her career came as a result of an unexpected turn of events.
Along with a Masters degree in Dance Ethnology, Norma has a psychology degree from her native Mexico. After immigrating to Canada in 1989, Norma became involved with the dance community. Norma worked as a full-time artist in theatre/dance performance and choreography. In 2004, a broken foot, with the surgeon’s prediction that she would never dance again (luckily false, as it turned out), got her thinking of a new career in an alternative healing therapy, like acupuncture. When a friend brought her a brochure for CREATE Institute, she felt she had found what she was looking for, as she was unwilling to give up her life as an artist. Determined, she hobbled up the three flights of stairs to the CREATE studio on crutches to an information night and was instantly hooked.
Norma’s first professional experience came directly out of the practicum work in her third year, at the Toronto General Hospital where was working with her supervisor, Janine Hancock. Their clients were people with eating disorders. An out of the blue opportunity arose when Ms. Hancock went on sabbatical for a few months and asked Norma to take over the program. When the contract was over, it only took a couple of weeks before she found a job with Hospice Toronto; she has been there since. With very little time for a private practice along with her busy artistic career, (her dance company Tolmec Dance Theatre and 2 Collectives, Vanguardia Dance Projects and The Choreographers Lab), Norma still manages to have a few private clients as well as to supervise some CREATE students. Her Expressive Arts work at Hospice has called on her to integrate all the arts. Dance and theatre are her forté, as well as music, which came naturally to her, as her father and brother are both musicians. It was mainly the visual arts and poetry that she was afraid of when studying at CREATE Institute. “I cried all the way through the painting weekend.” Through perseverance and experience, she now finds great joy in both. “Now when I work with groups, I go very easily into visual arts. Don’t ask me to do a lot of it personally, but facilitating it, I feel so comfortable. As well as with poetry.”
In her work at Hospice, Norma’s main goal with her clients, who are dealing with life threatening illnesses, is to help them celebrate their life through the arts: to leave a mark on this earth that will be remembered by family and friends, telling what they have accomplished, what they can feel proud of. “We call this Legacy Work at Hospice. Sometimes if they are unable to write for themselves, they may dictate a poem or a dream to me. The focus is that they are still alive, not that they are dying. -- to continue to have joy to the last breath.” Not only does she work with clients with illnesses but with their families as well in anticipatory bereavement and grief. In fact Hospice deals with all kinds of loss, from divorce to newcomers who have lost their country, language and culture.
Many CREATE Institute students upon graduating volunteer at Hospice to gain an experience of working one on one with clients. “ Hospice Toronto is not an overnight facility. We mostly go to the client’s home, though I spend most of my time at agencies that the Hospice is partnered with.” “The work affects me. The collaboration with the patient really feeds me and makes me very animated, very alive.” Working as an Expressive Art Therapist not only changed Norma’s personal life, where she describes herself as always growing and becoming more aware of her surroundings, more sensitive and more compassionate. She also says that using the arts in her daily life helps her to be more relaxed and to have more fun. As to her own dance work, she feels it has also changed her. It took her back to her aboriginal culture in which the arts were integrated, rather than separated into dance, theatre, music, writing and visual art.
Recently Norma created a piece called Becoming Namuli, (Grandmother in her native Yaqui language). The piece came out of her difficulties during menopause. “Instead of crying all day, I decided I needed to express myself in a more creative way. So the first thing I did, which I never do, is write. Part of the CREATE Institute training was journaling, through free association. A script came out of that. From there I did some collaging using traditional aboriginal images and ritual objects like feathers and stones. It became a whole intermodal experience.” This intermodality has even penetrated her teaching at Trent University, where she teaches an Indigenous Dance Theatre course. “At first it took the students by surprise but now it has just become part of their dancing.” As Norma says “Expressive Arts Therapy is a life changing career. I love it, and what I get from the client is just priceless. As for my work in dance/theatre, my thinking is that I will continue performing until I die.”
Along with a Masters degree in Dance Ethnology, Norma has a psychology degree from her native Mexico. After immigrating to Canada in 1989, Norma became involved with the dance community. Norma worked as a full-time artist in theatre/dance performance and choreography. In 2004, a broken foot, with the surgeon’s prediction that she would never dance again (luckily false, as it turned out), got her thinking of a new career in an alternative healing therapy, like acupuncture. When a friend brought her a brochure for CREATE Institute, she felt she had found what she was looking for, as she was unwilling to give up her life as an artist. Determined, she hobbled up the three flights of stairs to the CREATE studio on crutches to an information night and was instantly hooked.
Norma’s first professional experience came directly out of the practicum work in her third year, at the Toronto General Hospital where was working with her supervisor, Janine Hancock. Their clients were people with eating disorders. An out of the blue opportunity arose when Ms. Hancock went on sabbatical for a few months and asked Norma to take over the program. When the contract was over, it only took a couple of weeks before she found a job with Hospice Toronto; she has been there since. With very little time for a private practice along with her busy artistic career, (her dance company Tolmec Dance Theatre and 2 Collectives, Vanguardia Dance Projects and The Choreographers Lab), Norma still manages to have a few private clients as well as to supervise some CREATE students. Her Expressive Arts work at Hospice has called on her to integrate all the arts. Dance and theatre are her forté, as well as music, which came naturally to her, as her father and brother are both musicians. It was mainly the visual arts and poetry that she was afraid of when studying at CREATE Institute. “I cried all the way through the painting weekend.” Through perseverance and experience, she now finds great joy in both. “Now when I work with groups, I go very easily into visual arts. Don’t ask me to do a lot of it personally, but facilitating it, I feel so comfortable. As well as with poetry.”
In her work at Hospice, Norma’s main goal with her clients, who are dealing with life threatening illnesses, is to help them celebrate their life through the arts: to leave a mark on this earth that will be remembered by family and friends, telling what they have accomplished, what they can feel proud of. “We call this Legacy Work at Hospice. Sometimes if they are unable to write for themselves, they may dictate a poem or a dream to me. The focus is that they are still alive, not that they are dying. -- to continue to have joy to the last breath.” Not only does she work with clients with illnesses but with their families as well in anticipatory bereavement and grief. In fact Hospice deals with all kinds of loss, from divorce to newcomers who have lost their country, language and culture.
Many CREATE Institute students upon graduating volunteer at Hospice to gain an experience of working one on one with clients. “ Hospice Toronto is not an overnight facility. We mostly go to the client’s home, though I spend most of my time at agencies that the Hospice is partnered with.” “The work affects me. The collaboration with the patient really feeds me and makes me very animated, very alive.” Working as an Expressive Art Therapist not only changed Norma’s personal life, where she describes herself as always growing and becoming more aware of her surroundings, more sensitive and more compassionate. She also says that using the arts in her daily life helps her to be more relaxed and to have more fun. As to her own dance work, she feels it has also changed her. It took her back to her aboriginal culture in which the arts were integrated, rather than separated into dance, theatre, music, writing and visual art.
Recently Norma created a piece called Becoming Namuli, (Grandmother in her native Yaqui language). The piece came out of her difficulties during menopause. “Instead of crying all day, I decided I needed to express myself in a more creative way. So the first thing I did, which I never do, is write. Part of the CREATE Institute training was journaling, through free association. A script came out of that. From there I did some collaging using traditional aboriginal images and ritual objects like feathers and stones. It became a whole intermodal experience.” This intermodality has even penetrated her teaching at Trent University, where she teaches an Indigenous Dance Theatre course. “At first it took the students by surprise but now it has just become part of their dancing.” As Norma says “Expressive Arts Therapy is a life changing career. I love it, and what I get from the client is just priceless. As for my work in dance/theatre, my thinking is that I will continue performing until I die.”