Upcoming Creating Space Workshops
Out of Isolation: Mindful Photography and Reflective Journaling - Begins October 16 2026
Out of Isolation: An Introduction to Mindful Photography and Reflective Journaling is a four- week, in-person, creativity-for-wellness workshop series. Participants use photography and journaling to forge paths away from isolation and silence and towards connection and communication. Responding to both photo and journal prompts, participants explore their relationships with self and with their community (including the connections they make with fellow participants).
Each week, Alison and Hannah provide guidance on mindful photography and journaling techniques. The Caetani Centre grounds, heritage house, and gallery offer participants inspiration as they engage with a variety of prompts, techniques, activities, and discussions. All participants are encouraged to reflect on their work during sharing circles and pair work.
The theme of the workshop series - Out of Isolation - draws from the rich and complicated life of Sveva Caetani, an artist, mentor, and teacher whose life story involved dislocation from her homeland, imposed isolation, and silenced creativity, followed by a late-life reemergence into art, teaching, and community. Along with writings and artwork by Sveva Caetani, the facilitators will make use of Neil Gibson's model of therapeutic photography (inspired by Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory) and Kathleen Adams' teachings on structure, pacing and containment when journaling (the journal ladder).
At the end of the course, participants will be invited (but not required) to share the product of their final photo/journaling prompt - "My Recapitulation" - with the class and, again, at the Creating Space Workshop Series showcase in Spring 2027 (details TBA).
No experience with photography or journaling is necessary to sign up for this course. This is a process-focused - as opposed to a craft-focused - workshop series, designed to promote wellbeing, community, self-reflection, creativity, and mindfulness.
Note: this is not therapy and we are not therapists. While we may discuss subjects that evoke many and varied thoughts and emotions, this is not group counselling. Instead, we recommend that you view this course as a supplement to professional group or individual therapy. If you are struggling with the course content or exercises, or if you are looking for mental health resources, please speak with your instructors.
Maximum Number of Participants: 10
Number of Sessions: 4
Dates and Times: Fridays in October/November 9am to 12Noon, 2026
October 16, 23, & November 6, 20 2026
Materials Required:
-participants own phones or cameras
Hannah Calder
Novelist (www.hannahcalder.com), creative writing professor, certified Journal to the Self instructor, and owner of Writing for All (www.writingforall.ca), Hannah Calder believes in the power of writing and reading to resolve conflicts, improve life management, and explore purpose. She offers her clients accessible, at-home writing techniques that can be used on their own or as a complement to therapy or coaching.
Raised in a mentally and emotionally chaotic home environment, Hannah turned to journaling to cope. She journaled daily, recording thoughts, emotions, lists, rants, poems, stories, and dreams. Eventually, Hannah's journaling germinated three novels - More House (2009), Piranesi's Figures (2016), and Hester in Sunlight (2024) - all published with New Star Books in Vancouver.
For Hannah, the page is a portal, an ear, a canvas, a friend. In her courses, she coaches her clients to discover the transformative, healing, and radically life-altering magic that happens when we put pen to paper.
Hannah lives in Vernon, on unceded Sylix Okanagan Territory, and, like Alison, was raised in the UK, immigrating to Canada - directly to Vernon, in fact - at fifteen. Hannah lived across from the Caetani House in the early '90s, oblivious to the fact she was neighbours with a genius!
Hannah and Alison met in a Mindful Photography workshop Alison was offering at Okanagan College. Having been an avid amateur photographer all her adult life and a big believer in art as medicine,
Hannah fell in love with Alison's approach to photography and invited her to share her expertise with a group of first-year Creative Writing students at Okanagan College. Since then, Alison and Hannah have been itching to find an opportunity to co-teach. This is their debut class together.
Alison Beaumont grew up in Bingley, a small town in the county of West Yorkshire in England. Starting with an interest in photography in high school, she continued on to college to study Art & Design, then to Staffordshire University to complete a BA(hons) in Photography. After meeting my husband they moved to Sylix Okanagan Territory (Okanagan Indian Band) currently known as Oyama, British Columbia, Canada in 2008.
Her work has developed over time, currently focusing on using photography, video & sound to explore space and inward reflection and the effects of human existence on our surroundings in work like Listen Softly, The Feels, Left Behind and Our Path. The climate crisis and the injustices faced are now the primary focus of her work.
Therapeutic Photography has been a strong interest for her and she has been able to pursue this at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland, where she completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Therapeutic Photography in 2023. This is an area where her portfolio of work continues to grow as she explores themes of identity, loss, mindfulness and expression of feelings.
Alison teaches a wide variety of photography related programs; Therapeutic photography sessions and series from Mindful Photography, Professional development and team cohesion as well as offering private sessions. Find her website at spiritofthemoment.ca and IG @alisonbeaumont.art .