Sue Whiteman and Jeanette Khron head up Little Dragons, an innovative creative program for children with a disability.
The facilitators first met in Byron Bay at the Vision Dance Company in the 80s; sharing similar visions they started to teach dance together and thirty years later they are still at it.
Owing to injury, Jeanette was forced to give up dance, and in doing so she found her way to art.
‘Having always dabbled in visual arts, I enrolled at Monash University in Melbourne to do a Fine Arts degree, majoring in sculpture.
‘As I had done some previous training in Psychotherapy, upon graduating from Monash, I immediately began a postgraduate degree in Art Therapy at the Melbourne Institute of Existential and Creative Arts Therapy (MIECAT), with the wonderful Dr Warren Lett, who was a pioneer in the field.
‘MIECAT is a multi-modal arts therapy institution, ie painting, drawing, sculpting, voice, drama and dance. Depending on a person’s propensities they could seek to access their inner states through the preferred art mode of their choice. Most people choose the accessibility of paint and crayon.’
According to Jeanette, arts therapy is a powerful and visceral tool for meaning making and personal reflection.
‘In the past I have worked with small groups in psychiatric hospitals, at the Lighthouse Foundation with homeless and abused adolescents, with children experiencing parental breakdown and illness, and private adult clients; and am now loving working with Sue and the Little Dragons.
‘Working with children living with a disability, I skip the processing/meaning making part and just engage the child in the phenomena of colours, media and marks. More aligned to creative play, each child has a unique and immediate response. The crayons and paint focus the child and encourage them with their own ability to express themselves in the colours, marks and images of their own choosing.
‘This of course encourages them to make more and the Little Dragons workshops at Alstonville Studio have integrated children with all abilities.’
A workshop in dance, music and art will be held at the Alstonville Dance Studio, Monday 29 September through till Friday 3 October with the group’s director Suzanne Whiteman, Cassie Warman, Jill Adams (dance and music) and Jeanette Khron and Rodney Sharp (art and craft).
All people young and old with and without disabilities are welcome to join the workshop – or come to the performance on 3 October. The group plans to hold an exhibition at the Alstonville Dance Studio, which will open at 6pm on 3 December – and will be followed by the Dragons Dance Display – to celebrate the International Day of People Living with a Disability.
All enquiries to Suzanne Whiteman phone 6686 2520 or 0428 748 294, or email [email protected].
Sue Whiteman is extraordinary. My daughter was involved in one of her integrated dance workshops and she loved it. The experience of working with other performers with a range of disabilities was not just fun but educational and the final performance was so moving it brought tears to my eyes.