Minding the Gap 2017: – Reaching Out with Mindfulness & Compassion

A day workshop exploring the issues arising from adapting mindfulness practices and curricula to meet the needs of the participants who may fall outside the reach of some mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs).

Every MBI will serve some populations well, being well aligned to meeting their needs, but will not meet the needs of other populations.

This workshop aims to explore approaches to adapting MBIs to meet specific needs, particularly of individuals or groups who might otherwise struggle to engage with mindfulness- or compassion-based approaches.

This online article is very relevant to the themes of the day: http://oxfordmindfulness.org/news/is-mindfulness-safe/

This article by Rebecca, Crane, John Kabat-Zinn and Mark Williams among others may also be of interest: What defines mindfulness-based programs? The warp and the weft

Programme

The symposium is being held on Friday June 30th 2017 at the University of Salford in the Mary Seacole Building. The ground floor lecture room is G.21 and is wheelchair accessible.

The schedule is as follows (exact timings of presentations and breaks are likely to differ slightly on the day):

---

• 9.30-10.00 Arrivals - there is a cafe a few minutes from the lecture room but queues can be an issue
  
• 10.00-10.15 Tim Duerden - Welcome and arriving practice
• 10.15-11.00 Dr Leigh Burrows - [By pre-recorded video] Mindfulness student and client voices and vulnerabilities- a brief reflection on research and experience
• 11.00-11.20 Tim Duerden - A competency based approach to teaching mindfulness safely - experiential focus.
• 11.20-11.50 - Break
• 11.50-12.45 - Tim Duerden - A competency based approach to teaching mindfulness safely - theoretical focus.
• 12.45-1.45 - Lunch
• 1.45 - 2.30 - Melva Burton - Mindfulness and Substance Misuse: Being on Purpose
• 2.30 - 3.15 - Louise Thompson - Manchester Art Gallery - The Mindful Museum
  
• 3.15 - 4.00 - Tim Duerden - Conclusions from the day & closing.

---

Presenter Information: more details to follow on some presenters.

Dr Leigh Burrows is a senior lecturer in Education, Social Work and Psychology at Flinders University in South Australia. Leigh is currently Director of the Flinders University Mindfulness Special Interest Group located within the Student Wellbeing and Violence Prevention research centre. In her current teaching, research, professional learning provision, consultancy and counselling she is particularly interested in 'safeguarding' mindfulness so its potential benefits are available to all participants in schools, university and the community including the most vulnerable. She has published in the area of mindfulness, professional learning, spiritual and emotional wellbeing, inclusion, trauma and holistic approaches to working with vulnerable young people with learning and emotional difficulties and their parents. Her research draws on phenomenological, heuristic, case study, organic and narrative methodologies. More information about Leigh’s work and publications including interviews and video and audio clips can be found at the following links

http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/leigh.burrows

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leigh_Burrows/publications

https://soundcloud.com/campusreview/leigh-burrows (research interview Campus Review)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzoerv42KDw (Classroom Calm, channel 7 interview)

New book (in press): Safeguarding Mindfulness in Schools and Higher Education: a holistic and inclusive approach. https://www.routledge.com/Safeguarding-Mindfulness-in-Schools-and-Higher-Education-A-Holistic-and/Burrows/p/book/9781138735521

---

Melva Burton: Founder of Being on Purpose: www.beingonpurpose.org.uk

Melva has had a variety of roles in criminal justice and community safety in both the statutory and voluntary sectors. She is chair of the board of trustees at the Bridge Project, a Bradford based drug treatment charity. Before setting up Being on Purpose in 2013 she was director of Yorkshire and Humberside Circles of Support and Accountability, a charity working to support the safe reintegration of sexual offenders.
In relation to mindfulness Melva has undertaken training Integrated Mindfulness, Action on Addiction and the Mindfulness Association and she hase just completed the first year of an MSc in mindfulness studies with Aberdeen University.

---

Tim Duerden is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Society, University of Salford and director and trainer with Integrated Mindfulness. With Annette Dunn and other colleagues, Tim has been developing flexible approaches to mindfulness teaching that aim to adapt to participant need as it emerges over the sessions of a course. These approaches, particularly Mindful Resilience Enhancement (MRE), have enabled those trained in them to develop bespoke mindfulness curricula in a wide range of clinical, community, educational and corporate contexts. A specific interest is in rooting mindfulness teaching within a framework that integrates mindfulness principles, educational theory and our growing neuro-psychological understanding.

Please see www.integratedmindfulness.com for more details of the MRE teacher training and Integrated Mindfulness in general.

We like to share resources we develop: please see www.attentioncycle.com and, for our audio track collection including our 'looped bodyscan' mentioned in last year's symposium, www.resilience.plus.

---

Louise Thompson: Health and Wellbeing Manager, Manchester Art Gallery

Louise uses the gallery’s rich exhibitions and collections to enable people to improve their health and wellbeing. Working alongside artists, health professionals and community partners the gallery’s health and wellbeing programme supports people to learn lifelong wellbeing skills – such as mindfulness – to practise them using art and creativity and then develop them in their everyday life, beyond the gallery walls. Mindfulness and the 5 Ways to Wellbeing are at the core of the programme.

Having been developing their work around art and mindfulness for the past four years Manchester Art Gallery launched The Mindful Museum campaign earlier this year. The campaign aims to raise awareness and understanding of mindfulness practice and how it can be applied in cultural organisations.

Other links: http://manchesterartgallery.org/learn/health-and-wellbeing/public-workshops/ and http://manchesterartgallery.org/blog/take-notice-art-and-mindfulness/

Other Programme Information

The symposium is part of the student enrichment programme associated with the MSc Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy, the OneCPD Mindfulness-Based Approaches for CBT module and the BSc (Hons) Counselling and Psychotherapy (Professional Practice). Priority for booking will therefore be given to University of Salford students booking before May 1st 2017. We have booked a large 300+ seat lecture theatre so we do expect to have enough places for external delegates.

An attendance certificate will be provided for CPD purposes at the end of the day.

We hope that most presenters will be in a position to share their presentations via this webpage after the event.

You may be interested in the presentations from last year's symposium available here.

We aim to hold this event annually; the next date is June 29th 2018. Provisional booking is available here: https://mindingthegaps2018.eventbrite.co.uk . We will confirm this event is running in early 2018.

As a single link to future events and resources you can use: www.mindingthegaps.uk which will be active from July 2017.

Travel

Please see the University website: http://www.salford.ac.uk/about-us/travel/travelling-to-the-university The Mary Seacole Building is building 12 on the campus map.

Parking for external delegates is available on-site and costs around £4 a day. Parking is very restricted and you are advised to use public transport as a parking space may not be available.

If you do park on either the Allerton Building car park (accessed off Frederick Road) or the Mary Seacole car park (smaller accessed off the A6) then expect it to be full by 9.30am. There is a pay machine located in the centre of the Allerton car park. There is also a pay-by-phone option with the car park number posted all around each car park. Please note that there is a different number on the different car parks so it is best to only use the phone app option when you arrive.

See http://www.estates.salford.ac.uk/page/car_parking_students_main for details of the pay-by-app. It is best to download it and set up your payment options at home so all is needed on the day is inputting the car park identification number.

Salford Crescent train station has very regular trains and is less than 10 minutes walk from the venue.

Buses are also very frequent.

Food & Refreshments

This is a free event so you will need to bring your own food and refreshments or use the café and canteen facilities on site or nearby shops.

The nearby Allerton Building is a 3 minute walk from the lecture room. The ground floor of Allerton has a large canteen that serves hot meals and a good salad bar. Hot drinks are available here from machines.

There is a smaller Starbucks cafe also in Allerton as well as a small shop selling sandwiches.

The issue will be queues - these can be so long that in the morning break you may spend the whole time in the queue so it is wise to bring your own liquid refreshment as a back-up.

There are water coolers at the entrance to Mary Seacole and Allerton to fill your own water bottles.

Booking

Please book via the EventBrite page for this event.

Queries

If you have any queries please contact:

Tim Duerden

t.duerden@salford.ac.uk