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Taking Time: To focus on what matters to you, your family and friends, your community, your world.
Taking Time: To gather and share ceremonies of your life changes, Attend to your personal and organisational challenges, Share your stories and nourish our communities.

Welcome to Taking Time
In our high-speed, modern life, time seems to slip away. As a Celebrant, Facilitator and Conductor of Stories, I offer you the opportunity to pause in the hurly burly of the everyday and take time to be still, to be with your life as it is now, and to focus on what matters. Using action methods, you can explore the important areas of your life: your personal life, your working life, your family, friends, community and world. You can untangle some of the knots, appreciate the things of value and return to the everyday world refreshed and refocused.

Celebrant - Ceremonies of Life Change
It is my pleasure to take time with you to create ceremonies where there is laughter, enjoyment and good companionship; that are a joy to plan and attend, and a pleasure to remember - even when there is pain and loss
With you, I compose and conduct ceremonies of:
Birth, welcoming newly born children and launching other creative ventures such as life visions and innovative projects
Weddings, commitments, recommitments and other partnerings
Funerals, memorials, other ways of letting go, separating and say good-bye
Birthdays, anniversaries and other life milestones
Women's ceremonies, menarche, leaving single life, motherhood, menopause and croning
Completion of separations, acknowledging grief, loss of relationship, loss of home
Major life changes, moving house, retirement, and retrenchment
Kicking up your heels, coming of age, bon voyage, and graduations

We have a good time right from the beginning
We develop a good working relationship
We communicate freely
We get clear about what you don't want
We get clear about what you do want
Your ceremony will flower through the conversations we have. It will be polished through our communication via email, telephone or in person.

Call me. We can talk over the phone or meet for coffee so you can decide if my service is for you.

Testimonial - "For both these ceremonies [wedding and funeral], Anna used her well honed skills of listening and clarification to ensure that she had a full understanding of what was required. She worked closely with all involved to assist us to fully articulate the meaning of the ceremony for each of us, what we needed to acknowledge, receive and honour through it, in addition to exploring what each could contribute … The breadth of Anna's work and life experience combined with her deep interest and commitment to the meaning and importance of ceremony in our lives means
that she is able to assist people to create an experience they might not have otherwise thought possible." Friend of the bride, Daughter of the deceased

Facilitator - Individual & Group Development
My process in this work assumes that creativity and good humour, a sense of companionship and enjoyment, provide excellent ground for productive work. I often use action methods which provide access to resources and knowledge, thinking, feeling and action which are not obtainable through intellectual effort alone.
Group Development
Examples of work tasks: planning development and review; addressing conflict; mediation processes; team building; fostering a learning culture; leadership development; celebrating achievements and articulating next steps; group supervision; training and managing volunteers; meeting procedures and community management issues.
I work with you to identify: The purpose of the work you wish to do, what outcomes you are looking for, what is standing in your way
Then we talk about the group:
Who they are, What they are doing well, Where they are having difficulties, How you want them to progress.
I make a plan and run it by you. We keep in touch so that I am up to date when we meet for the work. When the work is completed, we meet for evaluation and assessment of achievements and potential next steps.
Individual Development
I work alongside you to assist you to effectively address:
Personal, Professional and Organisational issues in a creative, life-enhancing manner.
This can often include addressing the balance between personal and family, professional and organisational goals. Such work can be called professional supervision, creative exploration, counselling or personal development.

Testimonials - "Anna has an excellent grasp of organizational structures and the impact of these on both behaviours and workplace outcomes, the unusual ability to combine a logical approach with her instinctive ability to 'read' people, readily discerns what's important for both individuals and organizations and is thus able to prioritize issues and resolve competing needs." Executive, Queensland State Public Service

"Anna has been working with me for six months. In that time there have been many changes and stresses in my work place. She has given invaluable assistance to deal with the job at hand on a micro as well as the macro level." Executive Officer, Peak Body

Conductor - Developing Stories of Life
Stories speak to our bones and heart, they stimulate our minds. They return us to the curiosity and wonder of childhood. They reawaken our imagination. Stories remind us, caution us, excite and inspire us. They nourish our histories and our dreams. Through story we see ourselves and each other. We remember our common humanity. We awaken our curiosity, our courage, to turn again to life.
Creating and Sharing Stories of Life Now
Life stories, as I write and tell them, express your experience of your life, your present, past and future with friends, colleagues and in groups and organisations. You will recognise the poetry of your language, your history, your hopes and dreams in my stories of you. You will be touched and affirmed in your life journey.

Stories in the Playback Theatre form
Mirroring stories through improvised movement and sound is another form I use, using the Playback Theatre form. Playback Theatre mirrors your day-to-day experiences. A group form, the audience is essential as stories beget stories, beget stories, like sharing stories around a camp fire.
It's great fun, always surprising, funny and moving.
I founded the Sunshine Coast Playback Theatre Company in 2003, and performed with the Brisbane Playback Theatre Company for fourteen years, as actor, musician and conductor.

Clients have included a range of community groups and State Departments such as Treasury, Housing, Transport and Statistics, sharing stories on matters of common concern.

www.playbacknet.org

Consider the opportunities for using Playback Theatre:
Your AGM
Other anniversaries and celebrations
Evaluation, performance reviews.
Conferences: A performance at the beginning to enquire: what do the participants come with? Expect? Wish to contribute?.
Conference Conclusion: What did you benefit from most? Enjoy most? Find difficult? What do you want next time?
Consultations: what are the stories you need to know so that things can change
Call or email me and we can explore ways of creating together.

Qualifications and Experience
Training with leading international practitioners: Francis Batten, Bev Hosking, Christian Penny, Mary Goode, Peter Hall, Rea Dennis and other local practitioners: Miranda Mills, Jude Murphy.
Accredited Practitioner with the International Playback Theatre Network. Founder & Artistic Director of the Sunshine Coast Playback Theatre Company.

Quote - "There is a vitality, a life-force an energy, a quickening which is translated through you into action, and because there is only one you in all time, this expression is unique and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and the world will not have it."
- Martha Graham

About Anna
A community worker and consultant for over thirty years, I have worked with families, communities and organisations in rural and urban communities in New South Wales and Queensland, with local government and across sectors with community groups, state and commonwealth departments.
Now, through ceremony, facilitation and story, I work with my clients to access our broader intelligence. Through effectively connecting our capacities in thinking, feeling and action, we expand our creativity and spontaneity, actively co-creating a sustainable world where we nourish those things of real value.
I have returned to country life, based on the Blackall Range looking out to the Sunshine Coast and beyond. My clients are local, regional and interstate.

Mobile: 0410 233 756
email: anna.heriot@gmail.com

Qualifications:
BA University of Sydney, Dip Ed Goldsmiths College, University of London, Advanced Trainee, Queensland Training Institute of Psychodrama, Civil Marriage Celebrant, Accredited Practitioner, International Playback Theatre Network

Media
'Take time to focus on ceremonies which express the heart of family & community life'
by Arcadia Love. Maleny Range News 2006
Anna Heriot is a collector of stories ... other people's stories, which she masterfully weaves into ceremonies of beauty and meaning. As a celebrant Anna composes and conducts ceremonies for births, weddings and funerals, birthdays, anniversaries and other milestones. Other milestones may include life changes, moving house, retirement, motherhood, leaving single life, (or re-entering it) through to coming of age, bon voyages and graduations. A country woman, Anna remembers a childhood of woodshed dances, fund raisers and Auld Lang Syne on New Years Eve, where the community came together to share major life changes heralded by weddings, christenings and funerals or what some called hatching, matching and dispatching! "Community bonds and shared ceremonies have been lost in the hectic lifestyles of the modern world and the scattering of family across distances, " says Anna. "People complain that they don't have enough time, yet we yearn for a deeper sense of meaning. If we don't acknowledge significant events in our lives we lose a part of life's richness. Taking time to focus, plan and share ceremonies gives us a chance to gather and share stories, pass on lore, affirm values, and enjoy the experience of life. Ceremonies provide an opportunity for people at the centre to focus on their own purpose and culture, and the essence of their moment of life change," says Anna.
Taking time with Anna means meeting in conversation where you work out the unique purpose of your ceremony and decide what kind of ceremony it will be. Small and intimate? Large and boisterous? Who should be there? Work out what you want to happen, when and where.
Authentic ceremonies are written in the poetry of the language of the people at the centre. For example, the parents of a child to be named, the shared song of the couple to be married, family and friends mourning their loss and celebrating the life of one who has died. "It is a time to speak and be heard," Anna smiles, "And a time for laughter and tears, dancing and stillness, music, good food and poetry."
Anna has received dozens of testimonials, all with the same sentiment..."you really captured the 'essence' of who we are".
Anna Heriot, BA, Dip Ed, Grad Dip Civil Ceremonies, can be contacted on 54999606 or 0410 233 756. Or visit www.takingtime.com.au.

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