Celebrating the Gifts of Femininity in Japanese Business

Hello, Friend of Unity Through Creativity,

Thank you to all who supported us in El Paso Giving Day. We deeply appreciate your gift.

We are honored to be facilitating a 2.5 hour workshop at the J-Win Women's Leadership conference based in Japan on Nov. 4th.  220 women from companies around the country will be attending. Lili Lopez and I will be modeling Feminine Leadership, collaborating with Takumi Komatsu of Azbil Corporation and a team from J-Win to design The Rainbow Eucalyptus-Wisteria Singing Tree of Women's Leadership. 

One outcome of the workshop will be a document organized around the five areas of focus of the conference - Politics, Economy, Social Life, Ecology and Technology.  Each participant will create art envisioning healing a heartbreak in their subject area, as well as dream for their life and work.

I've prepared a wisteria blossom example for the attendees. My heartache is that raising a family and using our talents to support that family is a battle. My healing Image is a feminine figure embracing those who need nurtured, while flourishing in a complex, connected and technological world.

We will keep you posted on this great adventure.

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We are also excited to announce that UTC Board member, De Palazzo, has completed her Innovative Team Building certification, creating The Seagrape Singing Tree of Goodwill made with residents of Five Star Senior Living in Pompano Beach,Florida.

The Seagrape Singing Tree of Goodwill

With gratitude for the precious moments we are blessed with in this lifetime.

Laurie and the UTC Team

Grace and Grit Grow

Detail, The Ash Singing Tree of Grace and Grit Embracing Our Pain and Purpose 

Dear Friend of Unity Through Creativity,

 Are you experiencing Grace and Grit in your life? The Singing Tree Facilitators in-training of our tenth Co-Heart came up with this subject in their July 18-20th training to create the 147th Singing Tree mural which they titled The Ash Singing Tree of Grace and Grit - Embracing Our Pain and Purpose.

Our heart is the source of both pain and purpose and embracing our vulnerability clarifies our purpose. The heart receives the universal blood that all people share. The green of the heart in this Singing Tree is the green of the earth, held by a turquoise hand and bearing with itself the profile of a human being. We are now living through a time that needs kindness, that needs love and compassion and Grace. And it is a time that needs Grit, that needs our toughness, perseverance and resilience to rise up over and over in the face of the time’s challenges. A coyotea totem of grit—showed up accidentally—by grace.

The 60' x 40' painting was created in two and a half days through the hands of seven people as they deepened their leadership skills and creative self-confidence in the Singing Tree training. The next session is Oct. 3rd, 4th and 5th and will be both in-person (at the UTC Studio El Paso) and virtual. Space is limited. Reply to this email if you'd like more information and have fun watching the time lapse video of our process.

Stay tuned for next week when we announce our two newly certified Facilitators—and when we will talk about extending the Singing Tree work into Innovative Team Building.

With appreciation for all you do to make Creativity and Community unstoppable! Your support is needed, now more than ever.

With gratitude,

Laurie and the UTC Team

Holding Hands with Casa

Dear Friend of Unity Through Creativity,

Over nine days in May, Unity Through Creativity led seven Singing Tree® Mural workshops with the Casa Auto Group based in El Paso, Texas. Casa Auto Group was started in 1969 by Wally Lowenfield, the grandfather of current owners Justin, Luke, and Ronnie. The Lowenfields have been expanding their company rapidly in the last few years, and Casa has grown to thirteen dealerships in El Paso and in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Wally started the company with a culture of putting people first. The goal that Justin, Luke, and Ronnie have is to deepen that culture in their established dealerships and to extend it to the stores that have come under the Casa roof in the last three years.

The Lowenfields asked Unity Through Creativity to bring the Singing Tree® Mural process to Casa to reinforce this process. We took our starting point from the vision Casa Auto Group has of itself: Casa is home, and home is heaven.

The Casa Singing Tree project began with a Lead Design Team (above) that included the three owners and twenty managers and executives. They selected the theme of trust, love, and community, designed the mural, and painted the background.

Then the five UTC facilitators took the mural to six locations for employees to add leaves, birds, stars—and for this mural, acorns, because the tree the Lead Design Team chose is the Texas live oak, a favorite of Wally’s, a tree that spreads its branches wide enough to include everyone beneath it.

We worked with 419 other employees over the next week. These are co-workers who in many cases had never laid eyes on each other before, as their shifts and departments gave them little chance for contact. These are people who had little idea of what is going on inside the person working alongside them. These are people who did not know that many others in their department or their store were facing the same challenges and sorrows that they are and share the same hopes and dreams.

The 442 people at Casa Auto Group who created the Casa Singing Tree of Trust, Love, and Community experienced the depth of the connection they have with each other, many for the first time. They began building the wider community of Casa Auto through stepping outside their routines and seeing each other not as sales people, as service people, as accountants or managers or owners—but as human beings. They had an immediate experience that their contribution to the mural and to Casa Auto Group is unique and essential, that each one has something to give that only she or he can give.

At Casa they say: Casa is home, and home is heaven—and for the people at Casa, heaven is holding hands, creating connections with each other, building their community on a foundation of love and trust.

Laurie and the UTC Team