Welcome to this narrative therapy queer space!
Welcome to sexualities, genders and narrative practice — a narrative therapy and queer space AND a free online course!
This course will give you access to a rich collection of free papers, videos and extracts to enjoy at your own pace across 7 ‘chapters’ or ‘lessons’. Hopefully you’ll find a good mix of stories, ideas, insider knowledges and practice examples.
We recommend that you have completed the What is Narrative Practice Course or have foundational Narrative Practice knowledge or experience before embarking on this course, as we will be referring to narrative practice ideas without describing them in great detail.
This course is freely available to anyone, although we think it might be particularly relevant for those interested in counselling/ psychology/ community work/ social work or those already using Narrative Practices in therapy and community work contexts. You do not need to have any experience working with people who identify as LGBTQ*. We hope that this course will be just as valuable for those who have extensive practice or lived experience of sexual and gender diversity as it is for those knowingly stepping into these realms for the first time. Wherever you come from we hope you will find something interesting here.
By no means will this course answer all your questions – rather we hope it inspires more!
Along the way, your host will be Zan Maeder, a narrative practitioner living and working on Kaurna land in South Australia, who completed their Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work in 2019.
This course has been created by Dulwich Centre Foundation.
We hope you find it helpful!
To invite you into this journey, we want to share with you two interviews of narrative practitioners reflecting on their journey into queering their practice.
Tileah Drahm-Butler (she/her) speaks about how decolonising and queering fit together in her practice, the importance of language, the guiding principle of ask, don’t interpret and the skills of being able to make mistakes.
Pshko Marden (he/him) speaks about the challenges of the unknown in his expanding practice around sexual and gender diversity. He shares a story of assumptions sneaking into his practice and the skills he used to respond; noticing, realising this is not a place you want to be, acknowledging and paddling back.
Hopefully these rich and generous offerings from Tileah and Pshko provided an opportunity to reflect on why you have taken up the invitation to step into learning about narrative practice and sexual and gender diversity. Now we want to hear from you!
Reflection questions:
- What does it say about your hopes, values and commitments as a practitioner that you are embarking on this course?
- What Narrative practice skills and knowledges do you think will be most valuable in expanding your knowledge and practice to embrace expansive genders and sexualities?
- Who in your life might be able to accompany you or support you on this learning journey?
Below each chapter, you’ll find a forum where you can share your reflections and exchange ideas with others taking this course.
A couple of tips:
- You will see a sidebar on your right where you can navigate through different parts of the course and return ‘home’ at any stage.
- As you go through the course we will invite you to click on different links to access a reading which will open ‘new pages’ or ‘new tabs’. As you progress you can close these pages and return to the main page to continue.
- We hope that the forums in each chapter will be a place where people engage with each other respectfully. Please note that the views expressed in these forums are those of the group members and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dulwich Centre or Dulwich Centre Foundation. Dulwich Centre and Dulwich Centre Foundation do not accept responsibility for them.
- If you have any difficulties with this site please email us c/o dcp@dulwichcentre.com.au
* This course does not yet include adequate representation of intersex experiences and perspectives. The acronym LGBTIQ is often used without meaningful inclusion of intersex experiences which can lead to conflation with gender diversity, misunderstanding and erasure. This course will provide some introductory resources created by intersex advocates in chapter two. However we would welcome future contributions (and reflections) from any intersex narrative practitioners or folks experienced in supporting those with intersex variations. Feel free to get in touch!
