Dear Reader,
G’day and welcome to the final issue for 2003 of the International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work!
Throughout the year we have greatly appreciated the feedback we have received from readers and we hope that the collection of papers in this issue will also provide stimulating reading.
We have particularly enjoyed the conversations that have been sparked from the articles published in this journal over the previous twelve months. These conversations and the resulting creativity in people’s therapy and community work practice is what makes the production of this journal rewarding for us.
This issue introduces a new topic for conversation. The first paper included here is entitled, ‘The Mother-Daughter Project: Co-creating pro-girl, pro-mother culture through adolescence and beyond’. This piece has been created by a group of mothers and daughters (including SuEllen Hamkins and Renee Schultz) and it describes inspiring conversations involved in the deconstruction and construction of mother-daughter discourses. This is followed by a reflection from Anita Franklin and a related piece by Amy Ralfs. We also offer an invitation to you, the reader, to become involved in further conversations on this topic. If you are working with mothers and daughters, if you are a mother or a daughter, and especially if you have a perspective on this topic that may not have been described in any detail in this issue of the journal, then we would love to hear from you.
The second half of this journal issue consists of a series of practice-based papers on different topics. Hugh Fox offers a sparkling review of the use of therapeutic documents in narrative practice. Jacqui Morse and Alice Morgan describe group work with women who have experienced violence. John Winslade explores how narrative mediation can assist in the re-negotiation of discursive positions. Lorraine Hedtke further articulates the use of re-membering conversations with people who are experiencing loss and grief. And Elspeth McAdam and Peter Lang offer descriptions of the use of appreciative enquiry within schools and school communities in England, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, and in Southern Africa.
As you can see, it is a diverse collection!
Over the course of the last two years, within this journal we have published papers from Australia, Indonesia, USA, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Israel, the UK, New Zealand, Mexico, Norway, Ghana and Samoa. In the first few issues of 2004 we are looking forward to publishing a number of papers from Hong Kong and elsewhere.
We are also looking forward to publishing more first-time authors. Over the course of 2003, we published 31 papers in the International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. Of these, 24 (77%) were from authors whose work we had never previously published in any of our journals or books. For a considerable number of these practitioners this was the first time they had their writing published in any forum. We are delighted about this as it means that the ‘community’ of narrative practitioners continues to grow.
We are also delighted that you, our readership, continues to engage with the ideas included in these pages and continues to encourage, challenge and support us. Thank you!
Warm regards,
Dulwich Centre Publications.
