Upcoming Events & Trainings
Registration is open for the following narrative trainings and programs. CEUs are available.
COURRAGE: A Narrative Approach to Responding to People Who Have Suffered Severe Hardships and Trauma
Dates & Times: Tuesday, April 23, & Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET
Location: Online via Zoom AND in person at the NonProfit Center, 89 South Street, Boston, MA
Instructor: Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo
Registration Fees: Regular registration fee: $400, Students/seniors registration fee: $350
NTI is excited to announce a 2-day hybrid training with NTI faculty member Ncazelo Ncube-Mlilo, who is known internationally for her narrative community work and will be traveling to Boston! In 1996, Ncazelo co-developed the “Tree of Life” Project to assist African children orphaned by HIV and AIDS. The enthusiastic worldwide response to this narrative-informed project helped Ncazelo step even more fully into an exploration of culturally sensitive counseling services for people who have experienced severe hardships and trauma.
COURRAGE is a collective narrative therapy methodology Ncazelo developed in 2014 in partnership with six women living in informal settlements in northern Johannesburg, South Africa. These women faced significant hardships, and Ncazelo will share how collective narrative work produced stories that feature these women’s strengths, skills, and courage in the face of immense sorrow, trauma, and grief. COURRAGE draws significantly from the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) who describes 25 Indigenous projects in her book, Decolonizing Methodologies.
Click here for details and to register.
Authoring Your Life: A Narrative Writing Program
Dates & Times: Tuesday, April 23, & Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm ET
Location: NonProfit Center, 89 South Street, Boston, MA
Instructor: Sarah Beth Hughes
Registration Fees: Regular registration fee: $440
We are the primary authors of our own lives.
Let’s not forget that. In fact, let’s practice that together with some writing practices shaped by narrative ideas, maps, and ethics. What might it mean to be your own primary author and write about your life on your own terms? And how might that ripple into how you practice your life, your work, and support others in being their own meaning-maker of their own life?
I have developed various prompts and exercises to assist you with thickening your own stories. We will explore practices that I hope are meaningful and healing as well as playful and creative. We will also have chances to share and witness each other in appreciative and supportive ways.
Click here for details and to register.
NTI Folx Tales: A Celebration of the Narrative Worldview
Dates & Times: Thursday, April 25, & Friday, April 26, 2024; 9am to 5pm ET
Location: Non-Profit Center, 89 South Street, Boston, MA
Instructors: With Vikki Reynolds, a Steve Gaddis "roundtable," storytellers, artists ... and you!
Registration Fees: For this event, we have decided to adopt a “consensual payment” approach. Please visit the registration page for additional information.
Please join NTI for a very special 2-day conference featuring Vikki Reynolds and members of our community sharing influential stories of their lives and work!
Folx Tales will be a two-day immersion into narrative therapy and community work where attendees will get to live the rich experience of being in narrative conversations while simultaneously developing their narrative skills and preferred ways of bringing the narrative worldview to their lives.
With this event, NTI is re-imagining what a “professional” conference can be. This gathering is purposefully not shaped by the normative assumption that outsider, “expert” knowledge is inherently more valuable than the diverse local knowledges found right here in our community. Instead, we’re organizing this conference around a key narrative belief: that every community has vast, rich, valuable knowledges that are deeply precious and worthy of sharing. All we need to do is bring our genuine curiosity and willingness to be moved to new, unpredictable places.
Click here for details and to register.
What is Narrative Therapy?
Dates & Times: Friday, May 3, 2024; 10am to 5pm ET
Location: online via Zoom
Instructor: Amy Druker, MSW
Registration Fee: Early Bird Regular Registration Rate available until March 31 -- $120.00, Regular Registration Rate after March 31 -- $135.00, Student/Senior Registration Rate -- $75.00
This workshop is for people who are new(er) to narrative therapy and interested in learning (or learning more) about its collaborative, respectful and socially just ways of understanding people and problems. By refusing to locate problems inside of people, and by always seeing problems in the broader cultural context in which these problems were produced, narrative therapy stands against the individualizing and pathologizing of people’s suffering. The intention of this workshop is to offer participants a taste of the politics and ethics that guide narrative therapy practices, and to consider how and in what ways these values and ethics fit and/or don’t fit with their own values, ethics and preferred ways of being in this work.
Click here for details and to register.
Narrative Therapy In Practice
Dates & Times: Friday, May 31, & Saturday, June 1, 2024; 10am to 5pm ET
Location: online via Zoom
Instructors: Suzanne Gazzolo, PhD, LCPC, and Matt Mooney, PhD
Registration Fee: $280 for two-day course ($255, when participant completed NTI's "What Is Narrative Therapy?" training)
This two-day training is for people wanting to learn how narrative therapy ideas, informed by poststructuralism, are put into practice in therapeutic settings. In particular, we explore externalizing practices and skills in the context of deconstructing and re-authoring therapy conversations. Clinical examples and experiential exercises will help support participants’ learning. Participants can expect to learn how narrative practitioners work to help people separate their lives from problems and identify new steps they can take that fit with their hopes and values. After completing this course, you can further your skill development through NTI's Narrative Certificate Program, which begins each fall.
Click here for details and to register.
Narrative Certificate Program, 2024-2025
Dates & Times: September 13, 2024, through May 16, 2025
Location: online via Zoom
Instructors: With Suzanne Gazzolo, PhD; Guadalupe Morelos, LICSW; and Matt Mooney, PhD; and ongoing inspiration from the legacy of Stephen Gaddis, PhD
Registration Fee: A non-refundable $600 deposit is required at registration or $3,700 - a 10% discount is available if paid in full upon registration. Payment plans are available
This year-long Narrative Certificate Program is for people interested in developing a rigorous personal understanding of the Narrative Worldview and its social justice ethics and practices. The goal of this course is to help participants establish a solid foundation for their narrative practitioner identity and preferred ways of helping. Drawing from participants' personal and professional lived experiences, the course emphasizes a peer experiential-learning philosophy and community-building orientation.
To ensure potential participants are informed about the various expectations and hopes associated with this course, we require interested participants to participate in a conversation before registering. A NTI faculty member will schedule an initial phone or zoom conversation to discuss your hopes for learning and answer any questions you might have. A decision will then be made about whether your hopes and the course expectations seem like a good fit. To schedule the initial conversation, please email Darcey here, with a subject line of "Certificate Program Initial Conversation."
Click here for details and to register.
Linking Therapists' Lives Through Shared Practice: A Narrative Consultation Group, 2024-2025
Dates & Times: September 11, 2024, through May 21, 2025
Location: online via Zoom
Instructors: With Suzanne Gazzolo, PhD and Matt Mooney, PhD
Registration Fee: A non-refundable $350 deposit is required at registration or $2,000. Payment plans are available
This narrative practice group is for therapy practitioners interested in furthering their relationship with the narrative worldview and building community around shared values and purposes. We are excited to offer a program with a focus on presenting and witnessing each other's work. We ask that you have completed a year-long Narrative training program or an equivalent prior to participation. Matt and Suzanne were inspired to offer this program after over 10 years of weekly learning and consulting together with other colleagues committed to developing skills and relationships aligned with the narrative worldview.