Safe Harbor Recovery Center and New Hampshire Theatre Project announce Community Story Connection training curriculum

PORTSMOUTH—Safe Harbor Recovery Center and New Hampshire Theatre Project announce the completion of an experiential training curriculum: Community Story Connection. This training uses applied theater techniques to enhance strategic disclosure in peer recovery support services.


Peer recovery support is a new field, created in response to the opioid crisis. Certified Recovery Support Workers (CRSW’s) are licensed and trained in ethics and the domains of recovery service, but there are limited experiential trainings available for using Strategic Disclosure, which is one of the primary tools in peer support.

The Community Story Connection training uses applied theater techniques like improvisation, creative story-making, strategic storytelling and acting. The artistic process reintroduces participants to their own stories and allows them to extract key points for use in engaging with clients; personal experiences are externalized and “de-sensitized” so they can be used strategically.

This training was developed through a collaboration between New Hampshire Theatre Project artists Genevieve Aichele and CJ Lewis, along with Whitney Brown, executive director of Safe Harbor Recovery Center and her staff. Other participating artists included Molly Meng, Leslie Pasternack, James Sears and Jennifer Towle.

“Recovery is a creative process,” says Whitney Brown, “And this novel training experience with New Hampshire Theatre Project was able to capture that essence and create for us a collective story and experience from which our team will continue to resource as we grow within the community.”

Community Story Connection is now available to other recovery centers and community programs in need of training in strategic disclosure.

This project was created with funding support from the Arts in Health program at the NH State Council on the Arts. The Arts in Health program, along with all other grant programs at the Arts Council, has been eliminated in the current state budget recently signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte.
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For more information about Community Story Connection, please contact CJ Lewis at NHTP: cj@nhtheatreproject.org
 
DISCLAIMER: The above information wasn't created by the Chamber Collaborative, but is being shared on behalf of a member.

Safe Harbor Recovery Center and New Hampshire Theatre Project announce Community Story Connection training curriculum