CARINA COSTOM
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Program offerings - under re-construction

Initial Consultation
Schedule an initial visit to learn more about our services and what we offer.
30mn free
Weekly or bi-weekly expressive arts facilitation sessions for youth, children and adults.
  • The length of the sessions vary from one to two hours.
  • Weekend and evening appointments are available.
  • Facilitation can be conducted in French or English.
  • Cost: 75$-120$  per hour (materials included) +HST.
Individual Expressive Arts Facilitation with Carina
Gift yourself or someone you care about with an 1 hour session of Individual Expressive Arts Facilitation. This holistic form of creativity support is very effective in supporting transition and well-being. Expressive Ars Facilitation is about making space and inviting in the joy of creativity into your daily life.

Expressive Arts Facilitation combines creative processes to foster personal growth, clarification of work and/or personal issues and aid in problem resolution. By integrating the arts processes you gain access to your inner resources for clarity, illumination, creativity, new perspectives and new solutions to professional and personal problems. No art experience is necessary.

There are three distinct modalities available:

Clarifying:
If you need to clarify, we will use an exploratory modality in a person-centered approach using art media that appeals to you.
Solution Oriented:
If you know what the problem is we will use a solution oriented approach with a technique that will facilitate accessing knowledge that you have, but is currently disconnected from your awareness.
Experimental:
If you are interested in trying a variety of art media in an open ended way, we will schedule the session focusing on media: drawing, painting, collage, sound, movement, poetry, acting, etc., depending on what you like. No art experience is necessary.

60 minute sessions are available by appointment,


Call us for more details.

Guided "express yourself" retreat for community organizations
4.5 hour expressive arts workshop custom-made to support your board retreat or community group celebration. Retreat facility fees are additional.

Please call us to find out more.
Zen Drawing
Join designer/illustrator/facilitator Carina Costom for two hour of Zen Drawing. We'll give you a poster sized pad of paper, some really nice pens and ask you to show us something that's important to you by putting it on paper 100 times. Maybe it's a 100 different things that center around a  single idea or feeling. Maybe it's 100 iterations of the same thing. 100 coffee cups, 100 naked ladies. 100 delete keys. 100 things on your mind. 100 words starting with un-. Please join us and bare a little piece of your soul on paper at this easygoing workshop. This workshop is inspired by Stefan G.Buchner. Image: www.utdallas.edu/~msfarhan/photos.jpg
Youth Programs
Power of Hope inspired youth programs take many different forms, but they are all places where youth can explore their creativity, learn from diversity, express themselves and connect with others in ways that are positive and supportive. School-year programs can be brought to other surrounding areas.

Please call us to find out more.
The Five pointed Metaphor
Gift yourself or an organization  you care about with a 3.0 hour session where multi-arts techniques are used to express, capture and reflect on any metaphor you wish to explore as a group. This holistic form creativity is very effective in surfacing currents, dreaming possibilities as a team.

Call us for more details.

Improvisation as a community and social practice
This workshop operates on the assumption (core hypothesis) that musical improvisation is a crucial model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action. Taking as a point of departure performance practices that cannot readily be scripted, predicted, or compelled into orthodoxy, we argue that the innovative working models of improvisation developed by creative practitioners have helped to promote a dynamic exchange of cultural forms and to encourage new, socially responsive forms of community building across national, cultural, and artistic boundaries.

Improvisation, in short, has much to tell us about the ways in which communities based on such forms are politically and materially pertinent to envisioning and sounding alternative ways of knowing and being in the world. Improvisation demands shared responsibility for participation in community, an ability to negotiate differences, and a willingness to accept the challenges of risk and contingency. Furthermore, in an era when diverse peoples and communities of interest struggle to forge historically new forms of affiliation across cultural divides, the participatory and civic virtues of engagement, dialogue, respect, and community-building inculcated through improvisatory practices take on a particular urgency. Indeed, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have much to learn from performance practices that accent dialogue, collaboration, inventive flexibility, and creative risk-taking; from art forms that disrupt orthodox standards of coherence, judgement, and value with a spirit of experimentation and innovation.

Call us for more details.
Retreats for Adults
  • In blocks of time of 2 – 4 hours per day, from 2 – 5 days.
  • Such retreats are particularly suitable for those who have to travel far or would like to work more intensely on a particular creative exploration.
  • Each day (from 3 to 5 hours per day) will be spent in self-exploration focusing on the most pressing needs of each individual. The remainder of each day can be spent journaling, walking, swimming, cycling,
    kayaking, lying on the beach, bird watching; a time to nurture oneself, rest and recreate.
  • Retreats are available all year round allowing you to choose the season best suited to your schedule and/or your recreational interests.
Food and accommodations are not provided. Accommodations of all kinds are available, including Bed & Breakfasts, cabin rentals and organized campsites in Nelson, BC.

Individual Retreats:
CAN $100 +HST per hour.

Two Participants Retreats:
CAN $60 +HST per hour, per participant

Three to four Participants Retreats:
CAN $50 +HST per hour, per participant

Food and accommodations are not included.
Adult Programs
We offer Power of Hope inspired training for adults who want to increase their facilitation skills and learn powerful arts-based activities to incorporate into their work with youth.  These workshops are for youth workers, artists, teachers, facilitators and team leaders. You will learn easy-to-apply, proven techniques for increasing community, creativity and authenticity when working with groups.

All of our trainings in Creative Facilitation are based on the belief that you don't have to be a professional artist to use the arts in working with young people. You will learn how to help groups increase their emotional literacy and capacity for self-expression. And in the process, you'll discover how your own creativity can sustain you in your life and work.

Please call us to find out more.
Discovering your authentic self - Wisdom Horse Journey
The path to authenticity requires one to move from simply functioning and surviving in the world do becoming connected to all aspects of life and self and igniting a sense of the sacred in everyday life. The horses will assist you to move through thresholds for reclaiming  your true selves. You will be encouraged through a spacious atmosphere to become more aware physically, spiritually, physically and emotionally.
This course will encourage you to:

• Feel a deeper connection with yourself and others.
• Shift from surviving to thriving. Assist you in meaning-making about your Life.
• Gain increased clarity about your purpose and passion.
• Help you Re-connect and Re-member your truth during times of transition.

The exquisite nature of horses is a transformational experience for humans. During this program you will interact with horses, develop relationships, become part of the herd, and through the process of expressive arts, capture your experience and fleeting insights.

Horses naturally bring you deeper into your self and help inspire your path.
Equine Assisted growth facilitator: Anni Muhlegg, BSW, RSW, EAGALA Certified


Art is an expression of self, an invitation to joy and a way to capture and deepen experiential insights.
Expressive Arts Facilitator: Carina Costom, BA, Power of Hope Facilitator.


Explore the natural rhythm of an authentic life and heart-centered power through the way of the horse and the creative arts.

Activities may include:

Reflective round pen sessions with horse, horse grooming and thematically linked expressive arts activities.
1 day retreat.
Call us for details.
Sound Dance
A half day or full day celebration of sound through the ages and its relationship to rhythmicity and community making. A time to gather and reconnect with the essential sonic self.
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  • About Carina
  • The Xerophyte
  • In Development
  • Latest News
  • Contact Carina