Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025 | Movement workshop

Join Isaac for a movement workshop unlocking and connecting the body-mind-spirit. Through somatic exercises focused on breathwork and sensing, with movement exercises drawing from Acogny technique, the class explores ways to notice and positively respond to our inner self, build embodied confidence, and expand creativity.

The class begins with sensory scans of the body and its environment. Once this awareness is felt through grounding, movement practices are introduced to explore responding to internal sensations. Expect a gentle approach that grows into playful, rhythmic, and collective improvisation open to new and experienced practitioners alike.

Isaac draws from his ongoing training in somatic trauma therapy and mental health research to hold space to navigate these sensations.

Isaac Ouro-Gnao (he/they)

Isaac Ouro-Gnao is a Togolese-British multidisciplinary artist and freelance journalist. He graduated from Canterbury Christ Church University with a Multimedia Journalism BA in 2015, and from Queen Mary University of London in Creative Arts and Mental Health MSc in 2022. His work is rooted in magical realism and Africanfuturism with a focus on themes of childhood, trauma, memory, and mental health across the forms of dance, theatre, film, essays, and poetry.

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Festival

The Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025 explores survivorhood through exhibition, film screenings, dance performances, talks, and workshops – all from the perspective of artists and researchers with lived experience of trauma.

See full programme here: https://traumascapes.org/arts-festival

About us

Traumascapes is a survivor-led organisation dedicated to changing the ecosystem of trauma and creating new horizons for survivors through art and science. Our work is bold, disruptive, and caring. It serves trauma survivors (individuals and groups who have been impacted by traumatic experiences such as, but not limited to, violence or abuse), persons and communities who support survivors, & professionals, organisations, and institutions who work on trauma and/or with survivors.

Accessibility

The venue is fully wheelchair accessible with step-free access throughout. An exhibition information pack is available with visual and conceptual descriptions of each artwork. A large-print pack is also available. All films screened as part of the festival include closed captions. Peer support workers and a quiet space with noise cancelling headphones and fidget toys are available on site (see the 'Caring for yourself and others' section below).

If you have any other access needs, please contact Julian and we will do our best to accommodate: julian@traumascapes.org.

Caring for yourself and your community

What to expect

The Traumascapes Arts Festival explores what it means to survive trauma, both individually and collectively. It includes the torment, the joy, and the messiness in between - all from the perspective of artists and researchers with lived experience of trauma. There are mentions/themes of colonialism, systemic violence, childhood and adulthood abuse (sexual, physical, emotional) and neglect, but there are no direct visual depictions of violence or abuse.​

Self and mutual care

It is important to hold space to explore trauma in order to raise awareness and to come together as a community to challenge the status quo and support collective healing. To create change, we must confront the reality of trauma - and this reality is a painful one.

But, as we do so, we must also counteract the normalisation of violence by fostering safety and protecting our wellbeing. As you explore the festival, we invite you to look after yourself and one another. Choose whether and when to engage, how much, and with whom. Step out when you need to and take care of yourself however feels right. Check-in with your peers too.

Support

• Peer support workers will be on site throughout the festival and you can chat to them any time. You can recognise them from their frog badges.

• A quiet space is located on the far end of the venue, on the right, where you can stay as long as you like, whenever you like.

• You can find noise-cancelling headphones, fidget toys, and art materials in the quiet space, which you can use at any time.

• Creative meditation and embodiment workshops are scheduled as part of the festival.

• An audio guide with grounding invitations is available for anyone to use as a way to explore the exhibition accompanied by some gentle grounding practices.

• For additional sources of support, please click here.

We may not be able to avoid all hurt and harm, but we can nurture safety and negotiate trauma with openness, mutual care, empathy, and grace. Thank you for being part of this.