HIRAETH

The CITCAT Approach:

Group-work, Training and Team Building

CITCAT is a highly versatile approach when working with groups. It facilitates a ‘safe playground of exploration’ designed to promote equality yet celebrate difference. The CITCAT facilitator demonstrates an abstracted form of Circus Art: a ‘social juggler’ who is ‘holding’ (Miller, 1993) ‘in motion’ individual and group processes.

The CITCAT playground is made safe by clear, robust boundaries and strict Health and Safety protocol. The key theme of ‘working together’ is introduced via warm-up games to affirm and assimilate. Creative materials spanning all performing and expressive arts maximize the group’s creative potential. The facilitator’s role is to cultivate a ‘holding environment’ where it is safe to experience, to feel and express: a playground of exploration, respect, permission, affirmation and validation.

Case Cameo

‘The group of apprehensive youth workers slowly began to join in the warm-up games: empowered with the total permission and respect for any level of participation. Soon they were all animated and interacting. Encouraged and affirmed, individuals began to play, delighting in new found abilities in the circus arts, in music and in play acting. Those who were expressing themselves through art and painting reveled in the choice to offer their imagery as potential group themes within the CITCAT playground. Artistic expressions blended as all individuals assimilated themselves into the group. The youth workers went on to develop a creative performance based upon each individual’s chosen role and activity: a highly creative and inspiring testimony to facilitated interpersonal creativity and cohesion.’

“Wonderful; Excellent; Playground of Joy; Perfect food for my inner child, loved it; Brought out the inner child, splendid; Excellent, want to do it in the forest; Ecstatic, joyful and sociable; Excellent; Joyful and refreshingly unstuffy and therapeutic.”

Training Evaluation Comments