Karen Stevenson, Art Therapist, Environmental Educator and Expressive Arts Facilitator
Throughout her life Karen has balanced her interest in technology with the desire to explore the power of creativity. Before her career as a post-secondary educator and administrator in the Digital Media and IT program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), she brought her love of classical guitar to bedside healing as an Artist on the Ward at the University of Alberta Hospital. Concerns for environmental devastation, climate change and how to engage others in making changes, led her to complete a Masters in Environmental Education and Communication at Royal Roads University. Still working in post-secondary education, she developed, taught and advocated for sustainability initiatives winning research grants, awards and presenting at conferences on ‘Education for Sustainability”.
However, something was still missing from her work and a chance workshop in 2013, “Intro to Art Therapy” was a turning point. She enrolled in the Post-Grad Art Therapy Diploma program at St. Stephen’s College, took additional training as an Expressive Arts Practitioner and launched Sustaining Wonder Counselling and Wellness.
She believes that our current community and global challenges need a fresh approach. Helping others connect with their innate creativity to explore new paths toward community and global wellness is her focus. For her ‘sustaining wonder’ is a necessary outlook to hold while traversing complex problems. She is influenced by writers and advocates for eco and social justice such as Ivone Gebara, Joanna Macy and Thomas Berry. As well, by eco-psychologists such as Renee Lertzman and others who work within the field of eco-grief and eco-anxiety.
She is an art therapist, musician, educator, researcher, expressive arts practitioner, mother, grandmother and seeker. She believes that engaging our creativity is a necessary first step in working individually and in community for change in a dynamically complex world.
Favourite Quote: “I remain an urban woman, but I now have a different perception of things – a bodily perception of the unity and interdependence of all living things and a growing awareness that we are one body with the whole universe” Ivone Gebara (Brazilian Ecofeminist).
Susan Spyker, Art Therapist and Recreation Administrator
Susan Spyker kindles the re-imagination of relationship, tickles familial dysfunction, coaxes reluctant self-expression, and most recently weaves ecological concerns and creative expression to explore our personal ecology and environmental identity. As an MPS-Art Therapy graduate, a Recreation coordinator and therapist (BA), an artist, dancer, and green teacher mom, she envisions a life of belonging, sustainability, and eagle-like perspective (big picture).
Susan is a potter, spirit doll maker, and wannabe clown and storyteller. She has facilitated numerous engaging and imaginative retreats and workshops weaving art, movement, storytelling, and nature for students, adults, and elders. Susan is the Social Media chair for CATA-ACAT (Canadian Art Therapy Association) interested in our ecological footprint while sharing knowledge and resources.
Many teachers and authors inspire including Joanna Macy, Jean Houston, Nancy Mellon, Otto Scharmer, and Peter London. Susan’s current focus is on heightening awareness of the dynamic connections of being an integral part of the universe and to living a meaningful life.
Favourite Quote: "We're being summoned by the world itself to make many urgent changes to the human project, but most central is a fundamental re-envisioning and reshaping of ourselves, a shift in consciousness. We must reclaim and embody our original wholeness, our indigenous human nature granted to us by nature itself." ~Bill Plotkin