conferences

[Adam Blatner]

Building on Sandy's good points, what about planning a joint conference of drama therapists and psychodramatists? They did this in England a few years ago.
         Warmly, Adam
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sandy Blackman 
  To: list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 10:00 PM
  Subject: RE: Long term viability of the ASGPP and the psychodrama community


  I was a first time attendant this year.  Here are my thoughts as a newcomer:

  The reason I heard of this conference was through my psychodrama trainer and other members in our training group, who convinced me that this community was worth joining (they were right)!  

  The reason I started the training group in the first place, was because my trainer advertised affordable one-time/weekly summer sessions on the NADT (Drama Therapy) listserve.  After the one session, I decided to become a regular member of her group because I discovered the joys of psychodrama (and this group specifically).  Before that, I had known about the drama therapy community for five years, and knew what psychodrama was, but had never experienced it first hand.  

  So here is my suggestion: (in addition to lowering conference prices of course)

  **Advertise inexpensive, low-commitment workshops or training sessions to the communities filled with all the young people.**

  The drama therapy community has tons of young people who discovered for themselves that theatre is therapeutic, but are looking for ways to make it apply towards actual therapy.  The drama therapy training requirements include a lot of psychodrama training.  

  Colleges and Universities- I've run across lots of undergraduate and graduate students that have gotten a taste of psychodrama and loved it, but have yet to connect with the field.

  I'm wondering if also other psychology/therapy communities could benefit.  I recently attended the national Psychotherapy Networker conference in DC with nearly 4000 people.  While a good portion of the therapists there mainly do "talk therapy," so many of the people I talked to got so excited and sounded so interested about psychodrama (and other action-based or expressive therapies) and had never gotten around to or found it convenient to get training.  Not to mention the playback workshop I went to where 30 therapists with zero psychodrama/playback/etc. experience left extremely motivated to do more.  

  All it took for me was one random affordable workshop in psychodrama to lead me to an interest in the field itself.  Couldn't it do the same for others?

  :)

  Sandy Blackman


  P.S.  Thanks all for making my first conference so great!  I will definitely be coming back for more :)








----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: Hug4abear at aol.com
    Reply-To: list at grouptalkweb.org
    To: list at grouptalkweb.org
    Subject: Long term viability of the ASGPP and the psychodrama community
    Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 21:58:02 EDT


    To all:

    I appreciate watching the dialogue about how we can make the ASGPP a stronger organization and increasing the size of the psychodrama community, including the view that we need to do a better job of drawing in a certain segment of the population that is seriously under represented in our community; namely, post-baby-boomers (people born after the early 1960s).  Perhaps two additional metrics for measuring the success of the annual conference (and the psychodrama community) could be:  (1) how many first time attendees we have attracted; and (2) are we increasing the demographic diversity of the community.  Does the ASGPP track these data points?

    I have several thoughts on these issues.  First, it seems to me that the issue of ensuring the long term viability of the ASGPP and the psychodrama community may involve numerous issue, not merely bringing the cost of the annual conference down.  Has there ever been a formal study that looked at the issue of long-term planning for our community?  Some questions that could be addressed:  What are the typical points of entry to the psychodrama community?  (Based upon anecdotal evidence, I do not think that most people’s first exposure to psychodrama is the ASGPP annual conference.)  Do we know how first time attendee have heard about the annual conference?  Are there segments of the population that we are not reaching, such as current students who are studying to be mental health professionals or professionals in other allied fields that could use psychodrama?  What are the ASGPP and the psychodrama community doing well when it comes to drawing in new people?  What is not working?  If it has not already been done, does it make sense for the organization to draft a formal plan that would help to raise everyone’s consciousness on the steps that we can take individually and collectively to attract new people to the organization and the psychodrama community?

    Some things that come to mind that may be factors in our inability to attract post-baby boomers from joining our community, include:

    (1) Lack of knowledge of psychodrama – how much outreach is being done?  Is there someway that we can better utilize the Internet to publicize the ASGPP and the psychodrama community?  For example, is there some way that we could have a link to our organization’s web site on the web sites of other organizations that are populated by people who would be interested in psychodrama, such as the American Group Psychotherapy Association.  Do psychodramatist and trainers who have web sites include a link to the ASGPP and our conference?  Post-Baby-Boomers tend to be very computer savvy and this seems like a necessary form of out-reach.

    (2) Attending the full conference involves being willing to invest a lot of time and money.  For someone who has little or no exposure to psychodrama, reviewing the brochure and figuring out that you can stick your toe in the water rather than attending the full conference is difficult to learn.  This information is generally nestled in the sign-up form at the end of the workshop listing.  The conference brochure and the organization do not heavily publicize that an attendee may attend only a portion of the conference, such as a pre-conference workshop or just one day of the conference.  Is there some way that we can better publicize (perhaps on the front of the brochure) this option and publicize that someone who likes what they see may sign up for more workshops?

    (3) Are there additional things that our organizations can do to ensure that newcomers feel welcome?  I know that we have a special event for first time attendees.  Does it may make sense for there to be recommended workshops for first time attendees?

    Steve Gordon





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