Right Livelihood

The term "Right Livelihood" may be rooted in Buddhism, but it's particularly relevant in a time of economic crisis, and many people needing to re-evaluate how they make a living and new ways to do work in the world. Right Livelihood connotes using your gifts, talents and experience to serve your community, doing work of meaning. In the IMA program, we focus quite a bit on Right Livelihood and how you can design a course of study that enhances how you interface with your work, community and passions.

Over recent semesters, here's a list of Right Livelihood workshops offered at residencies:

* Right Livelihood Panel (featuring faculty and students): What do we mean by this term, and what are ways to bring right livelihood to our current work, create new work, and help others find their own right livelihood?

* Connecting with Community: Making a Living Doing What You Love: How do you make meaningful connections with organizations, businesses and institutions in your community, and how do you nurture and grow those connections in search of relevant, important work that helps you enhance your gifts and also make a living along the way? This conversational workshop will include lots of tips as well as information and handouts on strong proposals, resumes, background material and more.

* Grant-Writing For Your Education and Work: An exploration of grant-writing resources, strategies, follow-up and other considerations, including ample information on where to find arts-based grants, awards and fellowships.

* Finding Your Calling & Making a Living From It: Two-part workshop on bringing to the surface more of what you feel called to do for a living, and then investigating how to begin and sustain an ongoing dialogue with that calling, including using tools such as writing, art, business plans, mapping, visualization and more.

* Planning, Facilitating and Assessing Workshops and other Other Arts-Based Community Projects: Come discuss how to set up workshops, coaching and consulting projects in your community, including ways to make contacts with local organizations, institutions and businesses; how to design and publicize (or assist the hosting organization with publicity) your group; screening participants; developing facilitation arts and skills; and general assessment information.

* How & Why You Do What You Do: Ethics from the Inside Out: All community work has ethical connotations, and how you handle those ethical questions that come up greatly influences the effectiveness of any work you do in your community. Come learn about the ethical dimensions of your work, and join us for a discussion of possible issues you might encounter, how to navigate your way through to the benefit of all, and why community work entails such ethical considerations in the first place. We'll have time for trouble-shooting, role-playing and lots of inspirational stories about how to make your practicum truly rewarding for all involved.

* Whole-Self, Real-World Facilitation: This workshop focuses on how to bring all of your wisdom and intuition to the real and outrageously dynamic world of facilitation. We’ll discuss how to forge a clear understanding of your own motivations and expectations; the role of the facilitator overall and as it applies specifically to you; the importance of sticking to that role (listening versus trying to rescue or fix); and intervention, confidentiality, and resource management for issues bigger than the group. Come share your experiences, callings, gifts and challenges in being facilitated and in facilitating at this interactive workshop.

* How to Do Arts-Related Work & Transformative Language Arts In Your Community: People, Places and Practical Possibilities: Panel discussion featuring students and faculty on specific ways to work with various populations, and approaches such as poetry therapy, journal therapy, educaitonal drama autoethnography, narrative theory, storytelling and coaching.

* Writing Business Plans for Changing the World: Begin creating your own business plan for launching the work of your dreams into the world, and look at how to further develop that plan over time, find needed resources, and start your own right livelihood.