Workshops for creative people, and the organizations that support them
Warm, practical group sessions that help teams and creative communities navigate how health, life, and the AI moment shape their work. Grounded in twenty years at the intersection of creativity and psychology, and in the Creative Health Cartography framework.
Made for the real conditions of a creative life
Standard creative advice assumes a steady body, a steady mind, and a steady life. Most working artists carry more than that at once. These workshops meet creative people where they actually are, and help them make from the life they have.
Organizations bring them in for a group: a company team, a staff cohort, a class, or a community of artists. Each session works as a shared experience and as team building, and sends every person home with their own map.
Each one draws on the Creative Health Cartography framework and its six domains, and each is warm, strengths-based, and informed by disability-justice values.
Two workshops
Each runs as a talk, a half-day, or a full-day session for your group, in person in the Bay Area or online.
Workshop one
Moving Through Creative Blocks
For teams and individual makers who feel stuck.
Participants trace what stands between them and the work, from perfectionism and comparison to burnout, health, and life load. They learn to read the block as information rather than failure, then practice concrete ways back into making. Booked for a team, it moves a whole group through a shared block together and builds trust in the room. Everyone leaves with a personal block map and one small experiment to try that week.
Participants leave with
- A clear read on where their block lives and what it is asking for
- A menu of re-entry practices they can use again
- One small experiment back into the work
Workshop two
Navigating Creativity in the AI Era
For teams navigating AI together, and for individual creatives finding their footing.
Most of what reaches creatives about AI is either hype or doom. This session offers a calmer third path: a psychologically-informed guide through the emotional, identity, and career questions AI raises. It leaves the tools and the arguments aside, and helps each person map how AI touches their creative life across six domains, then decide where they stand. For a staff or studio team, it gives everyone a shared language for a change they are moving through together.
Participants leave with
- Clear language for the disorientation AI creates
- A personal map of where AI touches their creative life
- A positioning statement and one concrete next step
Looking for one-to-one work?
Individual Creative Health Mapping gives a single person a written map of their creative life and navigation sessions of their own.
Formats
Every format runs for a group and adapts to your audience, whether a company team, students, staff, or a mixed room of artists.
Talk or keynote
60 to 90 minutes
An introduction to the framework and the six domains, with a live mini-map and one next step. Fits conferences, staff sessions, and author series.
Half-day workshop
About 3.5 hours
The full guided walk through the six domains, hands-on map building, and time to name one concrete change. Includes a participant workbook.
Full-day workshop
A deeper day
Adds hands-on making or business-model work, small-group discussion, and personalized feedback on each participant’s map.
Ongoing programs are available for teams. Fees scale with format, audience size, and scope, with sliding-scale rates for nonprofits, schools, libraries, and community groups. Request an overview for formats and fees tailored to your organization.
Where these workshops fit
Arts in health and hospitals
Patient programs, staff wellbeing, and arts-in-health teams.
Disability arts organizations
A deep values fit for both workshops.
Universities and art schools
Student wellbeing offices, MFA programs, and career centers.
Design and writing organizations
Guilds, associations, and member communities navigating change.
Corporate teams and agencies
Learning-and-development and wellbeing programs for creative staff.
Libraries and cultural centers
Public talks and community workshops, accessible and jargon-free.
About Kathryn
Kathryn Vercillo has spent twenty years leading groups at the intersection of creativity and health. She has facilitated healing circles for the global Mandalas for Marinke project, co-led trauma-informed, multilingual craft-and-storytelling workshops through In My Feathered Pajamas at the Chinese Culture Center and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, and led readings, artist talks, and small-group workshops for makers navigating health and change.
She holds an MA in Psychological Studies, developed the Creative Health Cartography framework through more than one hundred interviews with artists, and leads communications for the Center for Mindful Psychotherapy, a collective of more than one hundred therapists.
Bring a workshop to your organization
Tell me a little about your group and what you are hoping for, and I will send a short overview with formats and fees.