00:30:05
December 2022
Doing this thing together: Heather Easton talks to Christopher Smith about shared reading groups
The beauty of the words and the content of the story become the holding space…for everyone’s experience. A piece of literature is unconditional. Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith is a writer, community development worker and the CEO of Shared Reading NSW, an organisation that provides social bibliotherapy groups in a range of health and community settings. Along with his colleagues, Shared Reading is pioneering a ‘novel approach’ to mental health and well-being where group participants are able to experience the beauty of great works of poetry and literature and in the process reflect on aspects of their own experiences and connecting with others on a deeper level.
Christopher finished a degree in English Literature at Brunel University in London in 2006 before training with the Reader Organisation based in Liverpool, UK. After moving to Sydney, he established Shared Reading NSW in 2014, an organisation that has facilitated social bibliotherapy groups for hundreds of participants in person and online, along with training volunteers to run their own groups across the state. This year Shared Reading NSW was part of a research project by La Trobe University in Melbourne assessing the effectiveness of bibliotherapy in times of crisis, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2019, Heather Easton observed a Shared Reading group held at the aged care facility where she was employed as an art therapist. Chris and his co-facilitator read short stories and the poem ‘Happiness’ by Raymond Carver which elicited profound reflections on the participants’ emotional experience of life in aged care, as well as broader insights on relationships, regret and even their own mortality.
Heather talks with Chris about his own relationship with the healing powers of literature and poetry, the co-creation of meaning, and where bibliotherapy positions itself theoretically and politically in the world of conventional psychology and creative arts therapy.
Heather Easton, Turn Over, 2022, mixed media.
Chris Smith
Read more about Social Bibliotherapy training or the work of Shared Reading NSW
References mentioned in the interview in order of appearance
Seamus Heaney, ‘Digging’, from Death of a Naturalist, 1966.
Winnicott, D. (1960). The theory of the parent-child relationship, International Journal of Psychoanaysis, 41, (585–595).
White, M. (2010). Maps of Narrative Practice. Norton Professional Books.
Raymond Carver, ‘Happiness’, from All of us: The Collected Poems, 2000.
-
BSW, MAThR, MSpPath (Student)
Heather is an art therapist, narrative counsellor and exhibiting artist. She is employed in a school-based art and play therapy program, providing culturally appropriate support for aboriginal students. In addition, she also runs her own private practice working with children and their families. Heather is currently undertaking clinical training in Play Therapy and was a co-presenter at the 2022 International Childhood Trauma Conference in Melbourne. Her interests include decolonising practice and alternative therapeutic modalities including story telling and nature exploration. Heather is sometimes joined by rabbits and her dog in the therapy room. She lives and works on beautiful Dharug and Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains NSW.
This work is published in JoCAT and is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND-4.0 license.
-
Easton, H. (Host). (2022, Dec). Doing this thing together: Heather Easton talks to Christopher Smith about shared reading groups [Audio podcast]. JoCAT Podcasts. JoCAT. https://www.jocat-online.org/p-22-smith-easton