Your New Story

by Kristy LaCourt

This paper is based on a four-week series of creative arts sessions which provided a multimodal approach for creative exploration and expression in a group setting.

Sessions were held at a community-based agency for those living with cancer. Sessions were designed in line with the agency goals: reduce sense of isolation with cancer, improve the quality of life, and provision of a range of support.

In line with narrative approach and social constructionist concepts, these sessions were envisioned with the theoretical frame that life stories and perceptions create a frame for lived experience. The creative offerings invited opportunities to explore, create, reinterpret, and “re-story” to potentially find new perceptions and solutions in life. As those facing cancer also face the pivotal existential concern – life and death – it provided a creative means to make meaning through the creative process.

Through this series, the researcher witnessed the power of creativity to make order of chaos, the ability to find joy among life’s challenges, and the resiliency of the human spirit.