sp(i)eel arts therapies collective

sp(i)eel arts therapies collective – Co-creating community models of creative health for social repair.

Training programs

Masterclasses in Arts and Health

Detailed information of every program

Masterclasses on Arts in Health as a culturally responsive, healing-centered and localised practice.

• Location: South Africa
• Length: 4 hours each.
• Format: Online or in-person.
• Language: English, isiXhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans
• Programme Directors: Marlize Swanepoel, Uné Conradie and Phumzile Rakosa
• Contact: info@spieelcollective.co.za

Masterclass in the Circle as a Relational, Political and Epistemic Structure in C0-Creating Psychologically Safe Spaces.

This masterclass explores the circle as more than a facilitation technique-it is a deliberate reorganisation of power, visibility, and relationship. Participants will examine how space shapes participation, how colonial and institutional hierarchies are reproduced through physical arrangements, and how circles can cultivate conditions for psychological safety, mutual witnessing, and shared authority. Through experiential arts-based processes, participants will develop practical skills for preparing, holding, and facilitating circles that support trust, ethical engagement, and collective learning. 4 CPD credits available.

Embodied Knowledge: The Body as Archive and Source of  Wisdom

This masterclass explores embodied knowledge as memory, wisdom, and experience carried across bodies, generations, and environments. Drawing on trauma studies, medical anthropology, and arts-based practice, participants will engage in movement, creative expression, and reflective inquiry to access forms of knowing that extend beyond cognition. The workshop offers practical approaches for working with embodied experience in ways that honour both individual stories and collective histories.

Repair Through the Arts: Witnessing, Creativity, and Collective Transformation

Repair is not something that happens after harm has ended- it is an ongoing practice that coexists alongside rupture. This masterclass investigates how the arts create spaces where stories, emotions, and experiences can be witnessed, expressed, and transformed. Through multimodal arts processes, participants will explore how creativity can disrupt dominant narratives, surface hidden strengths, and strengthen relational capacity. The focus is on the arts as a practice of collective witnessing, resistance, and repair rather than therapeutic correction.

Collective Health: Cultivating Shared Capacity for Repair

This masterclass reimagines health as a collective capacity rather than an individual outcome. Drawing on community-defined understandings of wellbeing, participants will explore how connection, care, creativity, and mutual support contribute to collective health. Through dialogue, artistic practice, and reflection, the workshop examines how communities sustain themselves in contexts of ongoing social and structural challenges. Participants will leave with practical tools for strengthening connection, fostering belonging, and cultivating cultures of care within organisations, communities, and groups.

Together, these four masterclasses offer a coherent journey from creating safe relational spaces, to accessing embodied wisdom, to engaging in practices of repair, and ultimately to strengthening collective health as a lived and shared practice.