Report of the activities of the last year

Delivered Verbally by Mary Smail, Co Director
AGM Nov 2006

I would like to reinstate what the work of the Sesame Institute is as an educational charity.

In 1991, there Sesame had no members such as are here today at this meeting. By providing a service and availability to Sesame therapists, and building up an active community, membership numbers have increased, with new people coming on board to volunteer or work for the organisation. This is very healthy. However, the Directors, Working Group and Council have been developing a return to claim our educational roots rather than. We are an Institute not because of our membership, but because we have something to teach. We have 42 years' experience of standing by right brain values, the language of psyche and healing power of symbol communicated through the arts. The “informed instinct” of Marian Lindkvist is the “secondary intelligence” of James Hillman, or the “negative capability” of Keats, or the arriving at a place for the “first time knowing” of The Four Quartets. This is our unique contribution to working with the mystery of healing.

So, the Sesame Institute (UK & International) is a registered charity whose aims are summarised as being

• To relieve ill health of any kind whether mental or physical by the therapeutic use of Drama and Movement
• To organise, establish and promote training courses, seminars, schools, lectures and study groups for health professionals concerning the therapeutic use of Drama & Movement throughout the UK and overseas
• To associate with charitable and other organisations in the same or related fields.

We fulfil our charitable aims by:preserving and developing our unique integrated approach to training in Drama and Movement Therapy by

• providing information & educational resources
• watch-dogging the core of all Sesame teaching events to maintain a “depth quality” control
• providing Introductory Schools throughout each year as well as other professional development events
• promoting practice based research
• providing a networking community for Drama and Movement Therapists.

Over the last year, a team of 20 Sesame people working with Crosslight Management have confidently named the unique points about the Sesame’s Approach as:

• Being Jungian
• A refusal to separate Drama and Movement as Therapy. This comes from Sesame's primary premise that both body and imagination - movement combined with drama - are needed as a means of bringing about healing, raising self-esteem and making life changes.
• While using enactment and movement, it is non performance orientated and geared to the creative process, rather than the expertise of the finished product.
• It works less with the solution finding, left brain logic of the external world. It gives a place to the learning found in play, spontaneity that emerges from the inner world and trusts to the efficacy of symbol.
• It is oblique - meeting people's trauma or pain through metaphor rather than directly in an invasive way. The working assertion is that a client will have developed effective ways of coping with or avoiding a difficulty, and when a problem is confronted too early it will disappear and remain out of reach. We are not in the business of taking away a person's coping strategies but in helping them feel safe enough to finally embrace and explore buried feelings.
• It has a bias towards gesture, myth, and dream as being the first language of therapy and self-development and the intelligence of the right brain.
• It places value on the depths or psyche of each human individual and attempts to find a way beyond what is known through the ritual of an established session format.

These are the building blocks which we have landed out of the swamps of a very muddy year and we now need to move on, glean the good things from our history and shine them up to advance them on into the next era of Sesame.

In November after the AGM, Vicky Riddle offered to work for Sesame as a volunteer. She prepared old papers into archives of Billy’s early research which can now be viewed from the office.

In December 2005, Winter School ran with 18 people and made a profit of £3432 profit.

In Jan 2006, Council began a process of change from the present structure which is at present as follows:

The 1964 Dream
The Founder
Patrons
President and Vice President
Director(s)
Working Group and Administrator
Council of Trustees
Membership

We are working towards making a closer link between Directors and Council Trustees. The present system meant that a large Council met only four times a year and if a member missed a meeting it meant that they were 6 months out of date with decisions. Council members were invited to become more active by making a commitment to a heavier work load in time and energy. Everyone was willing, but family and work logistics or living outside London meant that Bernie Spivack, Tamara Collinson. Meabh Ivers had to stand down. At the end of this year we now have a Council of 8 people which we are holding steady for now until we see how the new level of commitment succeeds... We are looking to bring on external Trustees who will bring other than therapeutic skills to the table – accountancy, business skills, chairing the Council.

In February, Council and Co Directors and six other members of the Sesame community, including present students, met with Crosslight Business Management to look at Sesame’s strengths and weaknesses and future plans. So far the team has identified the following areas of growth for the next years:

• Reclaiming Sesame’s drama and movement approach and promoting the unique aspects of this style of therapy.
  
• Franchising the Sesame Approach
• Running the course Psyche and Soma
• Training potential Sesame trainers
• Running our own therapy course
• Networking internationally
• Run more CPD workshops
• Introducing new trainees into Sesame community

This work is being developed

Sesame Ireland ran its 6th Sesame training event, this time in Cork. Twelve people attended. The first full School will run in 2007 and we are exploring a CPD course in Ireland. Raphaela Heaslip agreed to become the Irish Administrator.

At the end of March, Dr James Hillman, one of our Patrons, came to Sesame to give a half day CPD day named “Invisible Mystery” in which we enacted Plato’s Myth of Er and then had the chance to talk to James Hillman. He was very moved by the embodiment of the story and found that voice, breath and body work added a fresh dimension to the concept of Soul and depth concepts.

In April, Sesame hosted a visit from the Health Professions Council. 23 people came to hear about professional development documentation. Spring School ran with 12 people and made a profit of £1964. It was good to welcome Rachel Porter, Haydn Forde and Beth Clements on to the team. Sesame Wales, put on a Introduction Weekend outside Cardiff and 17 people attended. Gillian has now taken on the role of Sesame Wales Administrator.

The now excellent Journal by the Journal team has been joined by David Summer on layout.

In May we cleared the office it and refurbished it with new cabinets and desks ready for our new administrator. We also left the Sesame Studio at All Saints Battersea after 15 years. Christ Church has offered us a home here in their hall.

In June I had a visit from Ann Ritchie who was retiring from her position on the Wates Foundation. She told me that when people retire from the Foundation, they are allotted £10,000 to donate to their pet charity. Ann wanted to give this money to Sesame along with a personal donation of her own. She stipulated that the money be used:

“To assist in the creation, organisation, promotion and delivery of courses, lectures, and seminars …. And to develop the existing outreach work with Psyche and Soma, further training in Ireland and Wales and courses which will enable others to understand and work through the Sesame approach.”

This generous gift will allow us to begin to work toward the educational aims we wish to promote.

Summer School ran with twelve people and a good profit was made again. Becky Mackeonis, and Vicki Riddle, Rachel Rogaly came on board. Priscilla Newman organised a concert, at which the Red Shoes team performed and consequently made £700 for Sesame.

In August, Colna Bernard joined us to move into the Admin position which Bruce Guthrie was leaving. Bruce has worked very hard in the post and evolved the admin side of the work hugely, but he had come to an end of this part of his work life. We were loathe to let him go, but were delighted to meet and employ Colna who is already bringing her own hallmark and grace to the admin of Sesame.

Di Cooper planned to make this AGM her final one before retiring as Co Director. Since she made that decision, her life partner Mike became very ill. The sad news is that Mike died, just a month ago. This means that although Di is standing down as a Director. We will be holding an event in 2007 to celebrate the huge and invisible contribution which she has made to Sesame. She has often travelled 6 hours to come to a meeting, whether at Central or at the Institute on a train service that is at the best, unreliable. It has been exhausting and exacting work and the events of the last year have made her feel that now is the time to find a new way of being involved in Sesame. I thank her for the partnership we have had. When Billy invited me to take the Directorship of Sesame from her, I did not feel ready. When Di was invited to join me in the role, we formed an excellent partnership and it is a great personal and professional loss to think of working without her. She has taken Sesame to heart and given her heart to Sesame.

Sesame is an organisation that runs on charity and giving. To be involved you need to make yourself known and not wait for an invitation. Working Group, Becky our Chair, the Council, the Administrator past and present, people who volunteer time, the Journal Team, the Complaints Committee who have been operating this year Crosslight Management, Ann Wates, give because there is something they recognise that needs to live on. Our accounts stand at £300.000 and look as if we have a lot of money but our income is £20,000 below what we spend. Goals of creating trainings will quickly deplete our nest egg so we cannot waste any more time. We need to move on and to invest confidently in our primary function to educate people in the Sesame approach.

If you want to be involved, please don’t wait to be invited. If you have time, energy, willingness, availability, IT skills, accounting skills, teaching skills, organisation skills which you want to offer to Sesame, because your heart tells you to do so, then that is the quality that will involve you at the centre and the grind of caring and developing the Sesame Institute charity.

I submit my report for the last year.

Mary Smail Co Director, Sesame UK and International