The January 2021 ACMHE Webinar:

Storytelling Through Creative Arts and Contemplative Pedagogies: Fostering Embodiment, Inclusion, and Empowerment

Through the creative arts and contemplative practices, which have both been around for thousands of years, storytellers are able to express themselves in interdisciplinary ways. In this 90-minute interactive webinar, attendees will explore storytelling through the creative arts and learn skills of contemplative exercises that can have a positive impact as we navigate through challenges such as COVID-19, racial injustices, and gender and sexuality inequities. Creative and compassionate self-inquiry helps clarify in expressing our soul’s passion and finding purpose throughout one’s life.

As a Filipino-American Artist and Scholar, I want to create safe spaces that allow for authentic storytelling that engage in nonviolent transformations of the mind, body, soul, and spirit. It is my hope that through participation in this interactive webinar, we will have learned to activate artistic, creative, and contemplative practices, better understanding who we are and empowering all that we can be.

Dr. Leonard A. Cruz is the first Filipino-American to be named Presidential Scholar in the Arts and one of the few to have an interdisciplinary PhD in Urban Education with a focus on the performing and creative arts. He is the founder of the Creative, Arts, and Resilience Project (C.A.R.P.) and is currently working on an interactive playbook titled “The L.A.B.A.N. Project: Learning through the Arts and Building Awareness Now!” This past year (2020), Dr. Cruz was a Movement Research Artist at Judson Church in N.Y.C., invited Guest Speaker for RIDES at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, virtually danced in Continuous Replay: Coming Together for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Co., and was on a distinguished Arts Panel discussing lived experiences of the dancing body toward radical survival for “Dance Like Your Life Depends On It” on World Aids Day. Cruz graciously obtained his 500 E-RYT in Yoga this past October, researching and focusing on a protocol titled “Resilience in Humanising Yoga OnlineTeaching.”