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When was Lefika born?

Creative group work is the medicine we use. The magic is in the relationships we cultivate, the quality of attunement, recognition and holding we provide. By Hayley Berman

When was Lefika La Phodiso born? As an art psychotherapist and group analyst, whenever I ask a client’s history, I ask what was happening before they were born. Pre-conception, what the cultural landscape looked like, who was in the mix, what the politics of the time was, what was going on psychologically for the birth parents etc. Celebrating a birthday acknowledges the age and stage of this person or entity, and necessarily invites a remembering. Every birthday card my mother wrote for me even in adulthood, recounted my birth, how she felt, and what was going on at the time. This will be my entry point for my reflections on how Lefika La Phodiso came to be.
My understanding deepens as my self-exploration deepens. To understand Lefika La Phodiso’s history is to understand the psychosocial context, including something of my biography as ‘the birth mother’. Growing up in an apartheid South Africa, as a privileged white child. I grew up in a home with my birth parents and siblings, alongside my primary caregiver, a black woman. I spent most of my time with her before the age of 6. She became and continues to represent home and my safe space, even in her old age. This complexity of my identity, injustice, deep love, loss – a feeling of helplessness, and being complicit in something so unfathomable was an unconscious driver of needing and wanting to be actively part of righting what was so wrong.
As a teenager, I had a car accident. I went through multiple surgical transformations, felt the powerlessness of being a patient. Over several years and through my art and photography I was able to work through and with these layers of finding voice. I discovered this thing called ‘Art Therapy’ from my matric art teacher and knew that was what I needed to pursue. Since teenagerhood, I took art materials to parks, creating spaces for anyone in these public spaces to collectively create. My Fine Art Degree at WITS as well as training in the UK enabled this dream of using art to heal. I returned to South Africa in 1992, pre- the birth of democracy.
As a newly qualified art therapist, I conducted weekly groups in Katlehong and Thokosa for 3 years, with educators in schools offering creative reflective spaces to work with and through their trauma. The levels of trauma experienced because of systemic abuse, violence and poverty made teaching and learning almost impossible. These spaces enabled educators to reflect on their lives, and on the lives of the children they were teaching and enhance their lives through the process of resonating, belonging, sharing narratives and creating. The question was asked ‘how do we do what you do’?
As part of Mandela’s democratic vision of a rainbow nation and part of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the educators were collectively instrumental in creating partnerships within the Departments of Education and Arts and Culture. We formed an NGO, ‘The Art Therapy Centre’ which was subsequently renamed to ‘Lefika La Phodiso’ (the rock of healing/holding) by the late Mamatlakeng Makhoane, pioneer art therapist and colleague. We managed to secure funding from the National Arts Council, Department of Education and Department of Arts and Culture, to fund bursaries for educators, artists, and community workers to train. Together, we co-created a training comprised of indigenous South African knowledge, art therapy and psychoanalytic thinking and theories. We ran the first ‘Foundation Course in Art Therapy’, from my garage at home, moved to the basement of the Technikon of Witwatersrand (now University of Johannesburg), then to Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust, then to St Vincent’s School for the Deaf and eventually to the Children’s Memorial Institute. Maximizing reach, the Lefika La Phodiso model emphasises the democratic group analytic approach as a space to learn and heal. The objective was, and continues to be, to increase mental health resources replicating therapeutic capacity using a model of practice that became known as ‘Community Art Counselling’, a trademark of Lefika La Phodiso’s identity.
Lefika La Phodiso has always reflected the developmental needs of a country emerging from decades of oppression towards democracy and responded to the complexities that each new leader brings. We are an organisation deeply attuned to the systemic factors that impact our emotional, spiritual, and social well-being. Creative group work is the medicine we use. The magic is in the relationships we cultivate, the quality of attunement, recognition and holding we provide.
I have lived in the UK for the past 7 years. Each time I return to Lefika La Phodiso, from the gate to the 2nd Floor of the CMI building, I experience a visceral sense of warmth and depth of connection. This emanates from each individual: the team, colleagues from neighbouring NPO’s, the children and young people, community counsellors and trainees, guardians, parents, everyone. As a Board Member and Founding Director I am privileged and honoured to have been part of the several iterations of leadership, partnerships and collaborations that have fundamentally contributed to the development and growth of this extraordinary organisation.

Download our 'Celebrating 30 years of community art counselling' book here. 

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