During the three years of the training:

• We cultivate the creation of guidelines and agreements for working together as a group and revisit them as we move through each session.

• Assignments carry the work between blocks and through the years and include  regular contact with the cohort and with mentors via zoom and phone. Individual practice includes: creating a Personal Development Plan each year; observing a tree through a full year’s cycle; charting one’s own life; presenting the biography of a well-known person; copying art and artifact through the ages; leading a workshop for a small group: accompanying an individual in a biographical conversation and presenting a self-selected project at the culmination of the course.

• Introduction and support of meditation and inner work practices including the schooling of perception and attention are an integral part of the course.

• Movement modalities such as Eurythmy, Spacial Dynamics and Authentic Movement are included in the program as well as singing and/or speech work.   

• We employ various artistic media such as clay, pastels, postcards, painting, writing, etc., developing facility in the practice of biography and social art. 

• Strong practices of conscious listening and speaking, working with objective observations and open questions are emphasized throughout the program as we work with our own life stories in groups and in pairs.

• It is fundamental to this work that we come together in person, as our emphasis is on finding and cultivating the creative human spirit through the mystery of human encounter. Although we use modern technology to stay in touch, we find there is still no substitute for working together in real time and space.

Enrollment process for the Certificate Program:

1. Contact us with any questions.

2. Complete an application followed by an interview with the director.

3. Make a tuition agreement.

Tuition is $5,000 per year.

*If you self-identify as BIPOC and would like to be considered a recipient of the Patti Smith Diversity Fund, please indicate so in your payment plan agreement.

We are committed to doing our best to make your participation possible.

The Biography and Social Art Program is a member of the International Trainer’s Forum, which is made up of representatives from biographical training programs around the world. Participants are awarded a certificate, recognized by the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, Switzerland upon completion of all phases of the training. 

The core faculty members are Patricia Rubano, Kathleen Bowen, and Joseph Rubano.

Program History

This is an exciting time in the biography of this course. We are always training ourselves to look at life as a continuous process of development and becoming, and this is a time when biography work itself is becoming more recognized and sought after in this country. There are a number of trainings and many ‘biography workers’ in most European countries, as well as in Israel, Japan and Brazil; there has been a slower growth in the United States with this being the only certificate training. Of course, there have always been those pioneers who brought biography work from the Centre for Social Development in England and their own longstanding relationship to Anthroposophy, who have been active in the U.S. and helped to spread an understanding of what an objective look at life could offer.

This training, which was founded in 1997 by Signe Schaefer, came with an impulse to bring a unique character to biography work that has a strong component of working socially with both artistic media and the art of conversation. Both of these have a countering and balancing effect on the anti-social forces that predominate today. Maria deZwaan, an art therapist from Holland, was a wonderful and strong influence in the first cycles and helped to realize this impulse. The program continues to evolve with each new group being part of its on-going development. It has never been limited to looking only at the phases of a human life but includes observing and studying the processes of unfolding, transformation and metamorphosis, which occur in all of life. Be it a seed or planet or person, we can trust that we are seeing something that is in process and as we train ourselves to see life as being in process, then the meaning inherent in what we are seeing may be revealed. Recently we have begun to explore what we have termed the ‘biographical conversation’ as something different from coaching or counseling, although it may serve some of the same goals. At the beginning of the program Margli Matthews, long-time director of the biographical counseling program in England, offered a block on the ‘Helping Conversation’ that has been foundational to the evolving of a one-to-one approach.