Transformative Repair

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Transformative Repair is a research initiative with Independent Schools Victoria to investigate how strategic and sustained engagement with transformative repair as an artistic practice can create supportive conditions for individuals and communities to find personal and broader purpose in times of unprecedented uncertainty and challenge, and design effective ways to “repair” their communities both literally and figuratively. Our team will explore how the practice of “transformative repair” might support cognitive shifts, compassion, self-care and an ethic of care for others within communities. Over three years, we will design, test and refine a pilot transformative repair program for students that supports them in (1) finding their own voice and articulating their personal and broader vision for the future, (2) building a personal and a community story that embraces and reimagines challenges as opportunities for transformative repair, and (3) sharing their stories of themselves and their communities through the arts.