The Power of Play 2024 Conference

♦ 9.00am Registration

♦ 9.45am Welcome

♦ 10.00am Morning Keynote – Courtney Rolfe

♦ 11.30am Morning Break

♦ 11.45am Round Table Exercise – Courtney Rolfe

♦ 12.30pm Lunch

♦ 1.30pm Afternoon Keynote – Dr Dan Hughes

♦ 2.45pm Afternoon Break

♦ 3pm – Workshops with Ben Kingston-Hughes, Julie McCann, Yeva Feldman and Honorata Chorazy-Przybysz.

♦ 4.30pm Evaluation and Close – Martyn ‘Eek’ Cooper

‘How light and playful conversations may carry hope and meaning for a child’s traumatic events of fear and shame’

We are thrilled that Dan will be joining us via online live stream from across the globe. Have you ever seen Dan present live? He is truly inspiring and it’s impossible not to leave with a belly full of fire to fight to do what is best for children and young people.Dan will be Zooming into the Playful Connections conference live. He’ll talk for an hour and will allow time for questions too.

Dan Hughes, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who founded and developed Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), the treatment of children who have experienced abuse and neglect and demonstrate ongoing problems related to attachment and trauma.  This treatment occurs in a family setting and the treatment model has expanded to become a general model of family treatment.   Dan has conducted seminars, workshops, and spoken at conferences throughout the US, Europe, Canada, and Australia for over 20 years.  He is also engaged in extensive training and supervision in the certification of therapists in his treatment model, along with ongoing consultation to various agencies and professionals.   He is the founder of DDPI a training Institute which is responsible for the certification of professionals in DDP.  Information about DDPI can be found on ddpnetwork.org    Dan is the father of Megan, Kri, and Maddie and the grandfather of Alice and Iver. 

 Dan now lives in Damariscotta, ME.  He has lived in Maine for most of his adult life.

Dan is the author of many books and articles.  These include Building the Bonds of Attachment, 3^rd Ed. (2017),  and, with Jon Baylin, Brain-Based Parenting (2012) and The Neurobiology of Attachment-Focused Therapy (2016).  Along with Kim Golding and Julie Hudson, Dan wrote Healing relational trauma with attachment-focused interventions: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy with children and families (W.W. Norton, 2019).  Dan and Kim have since wrote a workbook to accompany Healing Relational Trauma.  It will be published in2024.  Dan and Ben Gurney-Smith have published The Little Book of Attachment (W.W.Norton, 2020).

His website is www.danielhughes.org

Courtney Rolfe, LCPC, is a licensed psychotherapist, speaker, and trainer passionate about bringing Polyvagal Theory to clinicians and wellness professionals across the globe. A leading expert in the Polyvagal Theory, and long standing senior trainer in Deb Dana’s Foundations of Polyvagal Practice course, Courtney’s passion lies in supporting and teaching clinicians, helping individuals and communities heal, and in living the model of navigating the world with a regulated nervous system. Courtney maintains a private practice based in Chicago, Illinois, but spends most of her time in Oxfordshire, UK. In addition to being a speaker and trainer, Courtney is co-author of Polyvagal Prompts (W.W. Norton & Company), co-authored with Deb Dana. Courtney offers individual and group consultation for helping professionals, supporting healers and helpers bring the wisdom of the nervous system into their work. More information can be found at www.modernmindandheart.com.

SPECIAL CONFERENCE OFFER

We are pleased to offer a copy of Courtney Rolfe and Deb Dana’s new book, Polyvagal Prompts at a special Clear Sky Conference Discount. Please order your copy with your ticket for collection and signing at the event.

Keynote outline

The Polyvagal Theory: The importance of play in building resilience and autonomic flexibility.

 Welcome to the Polyvagal Theory! Participants in this experiential workshop will be invited to jump into the world of the autonomic nervous system, as understood through the lens of the Polyvagal Theory. Participants will be invited to learn about the fundamental principles of the Polyvagal Theory, such as neuroception, our internal surveillance system, our regulated and adaptive survival states, and the Social Engagement System and co-regulation.

As stated by the originator of the Polyvagal Theory, Dr. Stephen Porges, play is an important part of the developmental process which builds the foundation of neural regulation that shows up as resilience, flexibility, and the ability to build social bonds. Participants of this workshop will learn, from a neurobiological lens, how play interventions are critical to children’s healthy growth and development. With a Polyvagal approach, educators and wellness professionals alike can learn how to create a nurturing and healing environment to promote growth and change, build resilience, and teach the individuals, families, and communities a new way of understanding and managing their experience in the world.

Ben Kingston-Hughes is an international keynote speaker, author and multi award-winning trainer. He is also the Managing Director of Inspired Children and has worked with vulnerable children across the UK for over 34 years. He has appeared on television several times working on a variety of children’s projects and his distinctive blend of humour, neuroscience and real-life practical experiences have made his training invaluable for anyone working with children.

His game-changing book about play, “A Very Unusual Journey into Play.” has gained widespread acclaim and his brand new book, “Why Children Need Joy” is available now.

“A wonderful book, engaging and easy to read, worth every penny, and thoroughly recommended.” Jim Morehouse – Verified Amazon Purchaser.

Workshop outline

Imaginative Play – a journey into make-believe

Prepare for a journey into a strange world where nothing is as it seems and absolutely anything is possible. This insightful session looks at how imaginative play directly encourages creativity, brain growth, emotional well-being and is one of the most vital processes in childhood, supporting our most vulnerable children to thrive. The session gives delegates a wealth of ideas to take back to their settings to stimulate children’s imaginations. It also explores the facinating neuroscience of imaginative play, demonstrating that imagination is potentially one of the most important developmental processes in any child’s life and one of the most precious gifts they will ever receive.

Warning: may contain dragons.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

Julie McCann is a BAPT Play Therapist and Certified Theraplay Practitioner based in south London. She worked for many years at the UK fostering and adoption charity, TACT, where the focus of her work was a BBC Children In Need funded project called ‘The Power of Play’. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Roehampton where she teaches on the MA in Play Therapy alongside colleagues in the Arts and Play Therapies programmes. Julie supports play therapy and Theraplay supervisees from a range of professional backgrounds including social work and education. She also uses her play therapy skills in private practice, working primarily with adopted children and their families to build stronger attachments and process feelings around trauma and loss. Whatever the setting, Julie focuses on playful connections between everyone in the room. Working in the medium of play is certainly not always ‘fun’ and Julie recognises how play has the power to bring about relief to troubling and distressing feelings.

You can contact Julie at [email protected]

Workshop outline
Painful connections: when play isn’t ‘fun’

The act of playing with another can sometimes be painful and far from a source of joyful connection. Expressions of anger can feel more familiar and safer than sadness, loss, shame, frustration, joy and hurt.

This workshop will be a balance of experiential and theoretical and aims to explore your understanding of playful interventions with children and young people when the play seems to disconnect and put up barriers. Case material from Julie’s play therapy practice will be shared with a focus on clients who have experienced developmental trauma including those who are growing up in their adoptive families.

You will be invited to connect with other delegates through play and to reflect on your personal response to this type of engagement. We will think together about ways to help a child to move safely towards pain, to support them in our playful connections to gradually lower some of the protective shields and strategies that have served them well in the past. And it may even be fun!

Honorata Chorazy-Przybysz is an integrative creative counsellor (MBACP), clay therapist and practicing expressive artist with an artist residency studio at Rooftop Arts in Corby. Before qualifying as the counsellor, Honorata practiced as a therapeutic arts practitioner for years delivering group work to public health, charities, and MH organisations. She delivers courses on creative arts and playfulness for wellbeing for adults and teens based on merge of creativity, spontaneity, and expressive arts.

Honorata is the ambassador and CPD trainer for Creative Counsellors CIC since 2021 and practitioner member of APCCA (Association for Person Centred Creative Arts). She presented during 2022 APCCA conference on creative therapy in community groups, during 2023 Creative Counsellors Conference delivered creative arts workshop and in 2024 was a speaker for International Clay Therapy Conference.

She runs a private practice focusing on neurodivergent clients and those who prefer creative approaches to therapy. Honorata is the contributor to Creative Counselling book by Tanja Sharpe.

www.artlysing.com

Workshop outline

Artful Play or Playful Art – how we can create connections through art and play.

 To be fully playful we need to feel safe within ourselves and around others first. This creative arts workshop will foster the continuum of social engagement as well as connection with Self through the ability of creating outside the conventional approach of “proper art”. We will break the rules and playfully create new ways of visual expression as well as bring the collaborative way to nurture creative connections with others. The right side of the brain, play, imagination and creativity will be on fire!

Yeva Feldman, MSc, ADMP UK, UKCP, RDMT is a Gestalt dance movement therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience. She directs the MA Dance Movement Psychotherapy Programme at the University of Roehampton in London and teaches internationally. She is a clinical supervisor and works in private practice. She specialises in working with eating disorders and trauma and written about her work with adults with eating disorders in Payne, H. (Ed.) (2017), Essentials of Dance Movement Psychotherapy and her work with women with BPD and histories of trauma in A. Chesner & S. Lykou (Eds.) (2020) Trauma in the Creative and Embodied Therapies. Other publications include: ‘How body psychotherapy influenced me to become a dance movement psychotherapist’ in Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy Journal in 2015; ‘Forward’ in Unkovich, G., Butte, C. & Butler, J. (Eds.) (2017) Dance Movement Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities; ‘The Dialogical Dance: A relational embodied approach to supervision’ in C. Butte & T. Colbert (Eds.) (2023). Embodied Approaches to Supervision: The listening body.

Workshop outline

Co-regulation through movement: Embodied resourcing for the therapist/trainee

 As therapists, much of our focus is directed towards our clients, finding ways to help them regulate, connect, and heal. Often this involves becoming a “psychobiological regulator” (Shore, 2003, p. 185), attuning to nonverbal cues, recognising and modulating somatic experience and modelling self-regulation (Ogden et al, 2006; Schore, 2003). Our own capacity to self-regulate depends on how “anchored” we are within our own bodies (Carroll, 2009, p. 102). This workshop will be an opportunity to re-anchor to your body knowing and engage in a playful, creative, and socially connected embodied experience.

 The aim of the workshop is to resource you, the therapist, so that you can continue to resource your clients. This workshop will give you an experience and insight into co-regulating through movement and reconnecting to embodied resources through a trauma informed, polyvagal framework (Buckley et al, 2018; Kepner, 1995; Ogden et al, 2006; Porges & Porges, 2023; Van der Kolk, 2014). I look forward to moving with you!

Martyn Cooper enjoyed a career in nursing starting with mental health nursing before undertaking general nursing, specialising in intensive care and trauma. Now retired he works with Samaritans, Sue Ryder and as a performer both in clowning and with music. He has recently started his PhD looking at introducing therapeutic clowning into adult cancer clinical settings.

“Martyn “EEK” Cooper, also known as Eek the Clown, is a British clown and entertainer. He gained prominence for his unique and eccentric clown persona, characterised by colourful costumes, exaggerated makeup, and comedic performances. Eek is known for his ability to engage audiences of all ages with his playful antics and slapstick humour. He has performed in various venues, including circuses, festivals, and children’s events, delighting audiences with his lively and entertaining performances. Eek the Clown has become a beloved figure in the world of entertainment, bringing joy and laughter wherever he goes.”

If you are travelling by car:

The venue has a large car park offering free parking. You will need to register your car upon arrival at the reception desk.

If you are travelling by public transport:

Bus

The nearest bus stops are located on Lake Street, around a 1 minute walk from voco® Oxford Spires Hotel. Redbridge Park and Ride is a 5 minute bus journey or 20 mins walk away.

Train

Oxford railway station is roughly 10 minutes via taxi from voco® Oxford Spires Hotel.

Taxis

Taxi Fares are typically about £5.00.

Here are a couple of Taxi Companies you could use:

0 01 Taxis – 01865 240000

Go Green Taxis – tel 01865 92222

By Air

Heathrow and Birmingham airports have direct transport links into Oxford. The train service from Birmingham takes 1.5 hours, and bus service from Heathrow takes approximately 90 minutes.

Accommodation is not included.

voco® Oxford Spires Hotel are offering delegates B&B Rooms at £260 per night. To book please visit https://oxfordspires.vocohotels.com

Abingdon Road has quite a few alternative accommodation options, here are some you could try:

Travelodge Oxford – Abingdon Road

Newton House

Cornerways B&B

Green Gables

There are also several Premier Inns and Travelodges in Oxford

For more places to stay please visit: Hotels Combined.

Please note, we have not visited these hotels ourselves so would always recommend you check reviews before booking.

There are also a number of Airbnbs in the area. www.airbnb.co.uk