About

emareena is an experienced facilitator and adult educator with expertise in leadership development, building community with diverse groups, coaching and personal development, and storytelling.  Her most recent institutional work was at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility where she managed a training program for incarcerated women.  Since leaving that position, she has been designing the Storyclouding™ facilitation method, and developing a series of Wordcloud portraits.

While Em explored art as a child and young woman, her adult interests focused on photography, martial arts, dressage, writing, and dancing.  She turned to artistic pursuits in 2013 to work through a challenging time and has continued to develop her vision. Storyclouding™ as a process only revealed itself recently, but is a perfect and inevitable blend of her interest in art, language, movement, and expert facilitation skills.

She has witnessed, time and again, the power of alternative approaches to individual and group conflict, and believes Storyclouding™ provides just such an approach.  When we get stuck using only a portion of our intelligence and wisdom, using an art-informed facilitation process forces our brain to operate differently.  Including words acknowledges the importance of language and the impact of word choices.  Using a human figure as the container brings the words into our physical selves, increasing our empathy and connection to others.

Storyclouding™ as a visual processing method holds enormous potential for individuals in theraputic and non-theraputic environments, anti-oppression work, and small creative teams.  Contact emareena for more information.