Join us in Bloomington, Indiana, on September 5-8 for an opportunity to deepen your understanding of Relational-Cultural Theory. Our theme for 2024 is “Playful Connections” focusing on Relational Cultural Practices in Play. With special guest Dr. Amy Banks, we will be offering training, experience, and discussion on two session tracks for clinicians, performers, and gamers. Please block your calendar and make plans to join us!
Virtual tickets now available! Hear Dr. Amy Banks and others, even if you can’t make it to Bloomington!
Tickets to the Relational Summit are now available for both the full event and for Saturday only. Limited remote participation is also available. Please contact the Bloomington Center for Connection if you are interested in a scholarship to attend, or if you are an organization wanting to sponsor a session.
Speakers
We are thrilled to have Dr. Amy Banks (she/her) help us explore how Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) can inform the dynamics of play and the essential role of play in mental health and connection. Dr. Banks is a psychiatrist and educator dedicated to spreading the scientific knowledge that people need healthy human relationships for emotional and physical growth, and that promoting a culture of individualism and power over others leads to chronic stress and chronic disease.
As a Founding Scholar at the International Center for Growth in Connection (ICGC), Dr. Banks is the first person to bring RCT together with neuroscience and is the foremost expert in the combined field. She is also the creator of the C.A.R.E. assessment—featured in her book, Wired to Connect—an easy-to-use and practical guide for both clinicians and individuals to examining the quality of their existing relationships.
Christian Telesmar (he/him) joins us from the Northwest to present Disparity Trap, an experiential board game he developed to highlight the realities of the oppressive systems in which we live. Christian attended college at the University of Washington (UW) with the intent of pursuing medical school but fell in love with theatre and knew that’s where he was meant to be. Christian graduated from the University of Washington’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Acting program before relocating to Los Angeles, California, where he resides today. His performance work includes appearances on FOX’s Bones, 9-1-1: Lone Star, and The Young and the Restless. While in Los Angeles, Christian earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Purdue University Global and holds a Qualified Administrator license for the Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI) from IDI, LLC. He is excited to be fusing his many passions, combining his love of art, business, and education in the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion space with his board game, Disparity Trap.
As part of our focus on play, we are also excited to have Dr. Kat Castiello Jones (she/they) and Dr. Evan Torner (he/him) share their experiences with immersive games. They will be curating Live-Action Role Playing games (LARP) at the Summit to provide active exploration of some of our themes of play.
Dr. Jones is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Cincinnati, where they also research and teach on topics of inclusion, gender, sexuality, and game design. Their latest project is the two-day vampire feminist larp in collaboration with Julia Ellingboe and Sinking Ship Creations Good to the Last Bite, which will debut in New York City in Spring 2025.
Dr. Torner is an Associate Professor of German and Film & Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he directs the Undergraduate Program in German, the UC Game Lab, and the games curriculum for the new BFA in Games and Animation. His research focuses on race and East German cinema, German sci-fi cinema, and role-playing games. His latest games work includes crew support and story writing for the recent Finnish international larp Odysseus and the blackbox larp “Dude, the Head Shop Is Closed,” which debuted at Make A Scene 2024 in Minneapolis.
Nur Slim (she/her) is a Mexican educator, composer, and member of the National System of Art Creators SNCA. Her international works have premiered around the world, including a recent partnership with Amity Trio that has taken her opera Lucrecia and the Song of the Dudasaurios to New Mexico, Colorado, and Indiana. A recipient of several awards, Nur has worked to inspire music exploration with children, including “Animalezas Sonoras”. a collaborative project fostering early creative expression in 3- to 5-year-olds.
Rose Klein (they/them) is a nonbinary teacher, artist, and poet who engages with the process of collective liberation through play. Their academic work is currently focused on building pen-and-paper games which allow communities the space and structure they need to imagine a better future for themselves. Rose is particular interested in how queerness and neurodivergence can be woven into the player experience, and how liberation from oppression can be built at a community level through the creation of autobiographical art.
Rory Willats (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, interactive media, movement, and community. Creative interests include masculine social ritual in virtual communities, VR performance for audiences across virtual and contiguous space, and acting pedagogy for hybrid performance. A former member of the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media: Future Stages Lab, Rory’s current research traces the relationships between mediated-surveilling gazes, embodiment, desire, and the “revelation of lack”.
Marco Arnaudo (he/him) is a Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he teaches classes about Italian culture, history and theory of games, military history and theory, and comics and graphic novels. He is the author of the Storytelling in the Modern Board Game (2018) and The Tabletop Revolution (2024). Marco also designed the story-driven cooperative game Four against the Great Old Ones (2020) and has a video blog about games (MarcoOmnigamer on YouTube) with 25,000+ subscribers.
Amber Seger (she/they/he) is the Creative and Art Director at Cloud Curio. They are a UX certified graphic designer, instructional designer, and illustrator, working full-time at Kobold Press as their Project Manager.
Matt Rice (he/him) is an Emmy-winning filmmaker with fifteen years of documentary-style editing to his name. He is currently Creative Director at Blueline, a Bloomington-based commercial and documentary film company whose clients include academic institutions and consumer brands. For Matt, play is part of the translation process and has served a key role in shaping his creative approach. In the recent past, Matt has worked with Second City and Improv Olympic in Chicago and has taught skit-based comedy to kids at Constellation Stage and Screen.
Jonathan H. Liu (he/him) is the Senior Editor of GeekDad, where he has been writing about books and board games for two decades. He is a stay-at-home dad of three, an Etch-a-Sketch artist, and is always up for a game.
Kevin Makice (he/him) is an experience designer and one of the founders of the BCC. He enjoys applying RCT to all areas of life including gaming, online communities, civic engagement, parenting, anti-oppression work, and advocacy. Kevin designed the RCT Toybox, a collection of core RCT concepts along with artwork, ideas for play, and questions to help the ideas become useful in everyday connections.
The Bloomington Center for Connection will also provide content for summit sessions. Amy Makice (she/her), the founder of BCC, is a licensed psychotherapist with a passion for relational well-being and social justice. Meenaxi Palaniappan (she/her) is a licensed psychologist based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she works with adults in individual therapy, relationship therapy, and sex therapy. Together and with others, they co-facilitate the Psychotherapy Affinity Group (PAG) sponsored by the International Center for Growth in Connection (ICGC). Hannah Gilchrist (she/her) is a therapist who provides individual and couples counseling, as well as working with groups of all ages.
Schedule
Our Relational Summit will span four days of activities with most of the content slated for Friday, September 6 and Saturday, September 7 at First United Church on 2420 E. Third Street. These two days will follow a similar format: community-wide gathering of all participants for play and a shared activity to start the day; morning and afternoon focused content in one of two session tracks; and a final keynote presentation as all participants reconvene. A break for lunch will be provided between morning and afternoon sessions.
On Thursday evening, September 5, we will have an informal greeting for Summit participants at the Bloomington Center for Connection at 315 W. Dodds. There will be games and other playful activities, giving people a chance to arrive and meet each other before the main content is presented the next day.
On Sunday afternoon, September 8, we will again meet at the Bloomington Center for Connection for a Summit retrospective to process how the previous days went, what can be improved for next time, and to start planning the theme for the next Summit.
Relational Cadre
Content for the Summit will explore the themes of play discussed in monthly Relational Cadre sessions and in our “Cadre” podcast this past year.
The Relational Cadre are new and existing members of our BCC community who are invited to explore aspects of a central theme through the lens of RCT. Each session, participants were provided a prompt encompassing this year’s theme—Playful Connections—that was discussed in small breakout groups, sharing uncovered insights when returning to the larger group:
World Building: Co-creating Context — Explore how shared and co-created narratives enhance connection and allow us to play with how our cultures support and challenge connection with each other.
Imagining Together — Engage in a shared creative process that includes improv and storytelling, and explore how that helps us imagine relational possibilities and process feelings that arise in a safer context than interactions with higher stakes.
Sharing the Experience — Use expressive play to co-create meaning through the power of symbolism and metaphor in connection, bringing a shared language to future interactions.
Healthy Conflict — Embrace play as a means to explore conflict through expressive play: embracing the villain, trash-talking, and identifying and communicating when things aren’t fun.
Co-creating Memories — Retell our stories through play, with a focus on changing perspective and exploring both implicit and declarative memories that influence how we connect with others. Move from re-enacting to re-experiencing, releasing, and reorganizing.
How To Play — Articulate the constraints, actions, and consent that create safe and inclusive play, including using boundaries as places of meeting and growth, and deciding what and when to show yourself.
Spreading Play — Play connects people, and we all benefit from connection. Explore play as a way to build and strengthen community, collaboration, and growth.
This page will be updated with more information as the event approaches.