Our programs will engage participants in reflection, personal practice, and action on issues of identity, relationship, and social transformation. We will explore ways culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability weave through systems of power, oppression, and privilege, as well as ways to engage in social action towards liberation and equity. Participants will be invited to deepen their awareness, understanding, capacity, and skills, working with the lived embodiment of systems and their transformation.

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Our programs are built on the foundations of kindness, gentleness, and love in the service of building understanding, equity, and peace on our globally inter-connected planet. Solution-oriented in essence, we integrate aspects of psychology, phenomenology, somatic awareness, and Indigenous worldviews to develop playful, creative, informed therapeutic arts programs that support the nourishment of the imagination and the strengthening and sharing of each individual voice. We strive to create ideal growing conditions for personal development by gathering creative, intelligent and inspiring faculty who support and honour the deepest essence of each individual, whether colleague, student or client.

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Germinated on the Central Canadian plains, WHEAT Institute’s love of the land is at the heart of our programs, which lead to accreditation as art and expressive arts therapists and consultant educator/practitioners. We appreciate our head office location on Treaty 1 Territory and value the presence, history, culture, languages, and knowledge of the First Peoples and Metis of this territory including the Ininew, Anishnaabe, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene and Métis peoples. Our institute offers compulsory Indigenous language classes as well as Indigenous storytelling classes to reflect our commitment to Indigenous resurgence, along with the offering first Indigenized therapeutic arts diploma programs in Canada.

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A diverse group of teachers will support participants to explore identity and self in-relation, journeying towards braver and safer creative spaces. Together we will grow capacity to weather the storms of change relationally, deepen our embodied skillfulness to generate solidarity, and weave social justice practices in the midst of all that is turbulent. This is collaborative, creative heART work. We will explore structural and systemic layers, as well as the relational and personal internalized aspects of oppression and change. We will cultivate inquiry into resistance, rebellion, and revolution from a place of love and creativity. In this work we need each other: this is the practice of creative solidarity.

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Affinity group spaces will be offered to support participants in intentional exploration and community building with others whose identities and positionalities most align/share resonance. Affinity groups allow a sacred and co-created space for connection, vulnerability, and examination of shared identities. This time together in smaller groups often helps members safely explore some of their shared and practice loving, inclusive ways of being in the world together through the incomparable power and nuance of the arts.

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The time is now. The need is great. Be a part of the change.