Vol. 7

The Ikon Journal

Welcome to your Ikon Journal, Volume 7 (March 2023)
The Journal will be published once every trimester into your student portal.
Please remember, this journal is for you and we would love you to share your ideas, inspiring stories, events, pictures, tips and more.

Get in contact now with Prisca at experience@ikon.edu.au

Company News and Key Dates

2023 – 2026 Key DatesDownload

2023 Schedule of FeesDownload

Welcome to our new Ikon staff.

Ella
Student  Experience (Melbourne)

I joined Ikon back on Halloween in 2022, a great first day, as a member of the Student Experience Team here in Melbourne! I have past experience working in higher education and am here to help you with any questions you may have. I have a passion for the ocean and all things marine biology, and I love to read and cook.

Maddison
Education Services Advisor (Sydney)

Hi, my name is Maddi, but people also call me Mads (or Scottie)! I’m the Education Services Advisor here at the Sydney campus! I joined Ikon in November of last year, and this is my first job in education, which is really exciting! I love reading, going to concerts, and cooking for friends. I really enjoy helping others and being part of such an amazing team!

Margot
Placement Support Officer (Sydney)

I am the new placement advisor I began at Ikon in December 2022.   I am very excited to be part of the Ikon team. I have a background in the Early Childhood sector working with children and supporting students completing their diploma and bachelor’s degrees. I love travelling, I have an interest in horses and football. I look forward to meeting and working with the rest of the team.

Inwha
Admissions Advisor (Sydney)

My name is Inhwa but I go by the name Ina. I joined the team last week as an admissions advisor, making me the newest addition to the team! I love doing yoga and I have recently started playing bass guitar. I am very excited to be on board and I look forward to working with you and getting to know you.

Industry News and Trends.

PACFA SA

Safety through Diversity conference 14-18 November and which includes: Indigenous Healing Practices, Diversity in Gender, Body, kinship & sexuality, The Politics of Mental Health and Research and the future of the profession.

Click here to find out more

PACFA-endorsed CPD

PACFA CPD endorsements are designed to maintain high-quality standards of professional development opportunities offered to our members.

In addition to the PACFA-endorsed CPD events, there are several PACFA endorsed Short Courses and Online Modules run by our partners. These modules have been endorsed by the PACFA accreditation team, and provide facilitated, learn-at-your-own-pace style CPD opportunities that provide multiple intakes throughout a 12-month period.

PACFA-endorsed CPD online modules count towards the annual CPD requirements of our members, and are directly relevant to clinical practice in counselling and/or psychotherapy. These online modules are also facilitated and presented by credible instructors, practitioners, and experts in the field.

Click here to find out more

Latest early childhood education and care data released

New quarterly reports on early childhood education and care in Australia are now available.

Click here for more information

Early Childhood Australia Learning Hub

Established in 2014, the ECA Learning Hub is well-regarded for producing high-quality online professional learning.

The ECA Learning Hub is designed to help educators gain a thorough and practical understanding of standards, frameworks, and research about quality practice, including the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and the National Quality Standard (NQS). It is also designed to be accessible, affordable, and contemporary to ensure quality professional learning is available, no matter where and when it is needed. A library of over 90 self-paced modules, interactive webcasts and on-demand webinars across a breadth of topics ranging from pedagogy, WH&S, planning, and leadership are available on the hub.

Click below for more information:
Learning Hub
Early Childhood Australia

Events

Past Events.

Harmony Week

Harmony Week is the celebration that recognises our diversity and brings together Australians from all different backgrounds.

It’s about inclusiveness, respect, and a sense of belonging for everyone.

At Ikon we celebrated Harmony Week with an International Food Stall and fundraiser!

Dates: 20th March – 26th March 2023
Time
: Lunchtime
Where: On-Campus
Cost: Free

2022 Graduation

In March we celebrated our class of 2022! Sending out a huge congratulations to our Art Therapy & Counselling and Psychotherapy graduates.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the Student Experience Team at experience@ikon.edu.au

Melbourne: 16th March 2023
Sydney: 17th March 2023
Adelaide: 22nd March 2023
Brisbane: 30th March 2023

 

 

Easter Extravaganza

We celebrated the end of the trimester with chocolate and fun activities on campus this Easter!

We held a successful easter egg hunt as well as morning tea (with hot cross buns of course) across all campuses!

When: 4th April – 7th April 2023
Where: On-Campus

International Women's Day

This trimester we celebrated International Women’s Day!

This year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity – We can all challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination, draw attention to bias, and seek out inclusion.

Collective activism is what drives change. From grassroots action to wide-scale momentum, we can all embrace equity.

Check out our beautiful #IWD2023 video.

What’s happening around you.

Adelaide

FLEX at MOD.

Are limits made to be pushed? We dare you to find out.

Use your breathing to journey through an immersive deconstructed landscape and see if you make it out the other side.

Navigate ethical challenges and tell us, where do you draw the line?

FLEX that bit further, let’s see what you are capable of.

When: January – November 2023

Find out more. 

 

The Alice – An Immersive Cocktail Experience

Her world was a mess, so she lost herself in a wonderland of madness…and that is exactly how I ended up in the rabbit hole that is the Alice experience on East Terrace!

The Alice Experience is an immersive cocktail experience that takes you on a 90-minute “tea” party with riddles, quests, and cocktail tastings to make you curiouser and curiouser about what this topsy-turvy space has to offer.

When: 2nd February – 16th April 2023

Find out more.

Brisbane

OUTDOOR GALLERY’S PLAYGROUND EXHIBITION

Brisbane City Council’s Outdoor Gallery transforms Brisbane’s laneways and city streets into imaginative, curious, and engaging spaces. Comprising of light boxes, banners, vitrines, and evening projections, the Outdoor Gallery displays art outside in city streets, instead of inside on gallery walls. Recently, the Outdoor Gallery has grown to include art projections at Howard Smith Wharves and light boxes in Ann Street, Brisbane City.

When: 9th September 2022 – 16th April 2023

Find out more.

Melbourne

TIME • RONE

Set in the long-abandoned third-floor wing of Flinders Street Station, Time is a nostalgic love letter to mid-century Melbourne and a tribute to one of the city’s great icons.

Created and developed across the past three years, this truly exceptional site-specific experience is Rone’s most ambitious project to date. Profoundly atmospheric, Time captures both the grand scale and character of the site and the minute detail of a period of Melbourne’s history long lost to progress.

When: until 23rd April 2023

Find out more.

Sydney

Art After Hours at the Art Gallery of NSW

Every Wednesday night, wander through the Art Gallery after hours and discover new art and old favourites in our latest exhibitions and collection displays. Join a guided tour, and enjoy a drink or a bite to eat in the cafe.

When: every Wednesday night

Find out more.

 

Distance

Spring Botanical Mocktail Class

Using easy-access ingredients, all found at the grocery store or already in your kitchen. Learn to make your own herbal-infused mocktails.

Date: Sunday, 16th April
Time: 9am – 10am
Location: Online

 Buy tickets here.

Clubs and Groups

Queer Club.

The Queer Club is not an exclusive club and EVERYONE is welcome.
Join us on the Melbourne Campus for events and get-togethers! We also have online resources and discussion forums where you can get to know other people in our Ikon Queer Community.

If you are interested in joining, contact Andy at andyfernie@icloud.com or 0438 338 853, or Ella and Prisca at events@ikon.edu.au

Hiking and Camping Club.

The Hiking and Camping Club is based in Melbourne, where students and staff can get together to explore nature and take a break from the city!

Hikes are organised every trimester and we are open to taking ideas from fellow nature lovers.

If you are interested in joining, contact Ella and Prisca at events@ikon.edu.au

Permaculture Club.

Are you interested in personal growth and learning, while also contributing to your community and the environment?

If so, we invite you to join our community of people working towards critical thinking as problem-solving and a commitment to sustainable gardening practices.

Run via Zoom, the Permaculture Club meets monthly to dialogue & discuss sources, swap tips, workshop collective dreams and get to know fellow thinkers (no prerequisite required just a passion to learn and grow). This will be a collaborative endeavor and will take shape by the efforts of the collective.

If you’re interested, please reach out to Gabby at gab.j.aston@gmail.com or Ella and Prisca at events@ikon.edu.au

Journaling Club.

Open to all campuses (Adelaide, Brisbane, Distance, Melbourne and Sydney), held Monday and Friday evenings between 6pm – 8pm (AEDT)

Come to a space dedicated to deep reflection and self-knowledge, and cultivate your journaling practices in a supportive community. Each week, the group will be guided through reflective activities such as writing prompts and contemplative listening. Attendees are then encouraged to spend time writing, creating, and reflecting for as long as needed. There will be two weekly meetings, held on Zoom, to ensure that this club is accessible to as many of us as possible!

If you are interested in joining, please email/message Eloise at eloise.nouvelle@outlook.com or 0407 135 156, or Ella and Prisca at events@ikon.edu.au

Accomplishments and Celebrations

2022 Graduation

This month we have celebrated our graduating students from 2022.

Extending a HUGE congratulations to all of our students who have graduated and wishing them all the very best in the next step in their careers and their lives.

Check out some photos below!

Easter Extravaganza

We celebrated the end of trimester 2 with some exciting Easter activities!

Recommended viewing and reading.

A Matter of Death and Life

by Irvin D. Yalom, Marilyn Yalom

In alternating accounts of their last months together and Irv’s first months alone, they offer us a rare window into facing mortality and coping with the loss of one’s beloved. Informed by two lifetimes of experience, A Matter of Death and Life is an openhearted offering to anyone seeking support, solace, and meaningful life.

Fire of Love

2022 Documentary

Fire of Love is a moving, thrilling, and ultimately tragic story. It tells the tale of Katia and Maurice Krafft, two French scientists who spent their lives exploring and photographing volcanoes. Their love for each other is rivaled only by their mutual love for volcanoes, so much so that they passed away together while documenting a volcanic eruption in 1991.

The Wisdom of Trauma

2021 Documentary

Trauma is the invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds. Dr. Maté gives us a new vision: a trauma-informed society in which parents, teachers, physicians, policymakers and legal personnel are not concerned with fixing behaviors, making diagnoses, suppressing symptoms and judging, but seek instead to understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.

In the know.

Roman Ilgauskas shares his process of becoming a certified Jungian Sandplay Therapist and member of the International Society for Sandplay Therapy (Zurich, Switzerland).

Roman began his career as an art therapist, teacher and clinical supervisor in the late nineties and has accumulated 25 years of experience, training, and working as a psychotherapist in private practice. Jungian sandplay has as its roots in the collaboration between Margaret Lowenfeld and Dora Kalff in London in 1956. Together, they shared their ideas, approaches, and clinical techniques, to develop separately The World Technique by Lowenfeld at the Institute of Child Psychology clinic in London and Sandplay which was developed by Dora Kalff, a Swiss Jungian-oriented therapist.

The continued impact of these ideas in many instances were taken forward further by therapists from a range of different orientations such as play therapy, art therapy, sandtray therapy, the Erica Method, and the Dramatic Productions Test to name some. It was Melanie Klein who grasped the significance of toys and play as depicting or symbolising childrens’ profoundest emotions (for a detailed exposition see Mitchell, R. R., & Friedman, H. S. (1994). Sandplay: Past, Present and Future. Routledge.).

Central to the foundation of sandplay is the position that the client’s psyche carries an innate tendency to heal itself given a supportive environment. An aim of sandplay therapy is to activate the deep healing energies of the psyche by using a sand tray, water and figurines to convey the client’s inner world that is difficult intellectually to convey or understand.

The engagement of creating a Jungian sand tray through the creative play within a ‘free and protective’ space provided by the sandplay therapist, allows unconscious processes to become visible in a three-dimensional form for both children and adults. Just as in art therapy (diorama and art-using-a-box), a three-dimensional space provides an interior as well as exterior space to hold raw affect associated with loss, rejection, disconnection, shame or any number of complex expressions (Dean, 2016, p.156). As highlighted in the literature, sandplay provides a vehicle for the unconscious to let itself to be seen and known.

The Kalffian-Jungian sandplay method is characterised by the therapist providing the therapeutic space without interpretation of the tray and limited verbal interaction. The therapist does not make comments or ask questions while the client is making the tray. As part of a larger therapeutic experience, the method also includes other client-centred methods. The client creates trays over a period over time that provides a natural development or a sense of unification. The client ‘finishes’ making the tray in a session when it feels naturally completed. The therapist dismantles the finished tray after the client has left the therapy studio. The delayed interpretation and unpacking of the entire process, occurs some months after the client finishes their therapy process.

A central requirement for accreditation as a certified sandplay therapist requires the completion of one’s own sandplay process over a minimum of a year or longer, depending on the completion that unfolds naturally. It is important for the process to remain at a nonverbal, instinctive level, rather than at cognitive intellectual place, so that the unconscious can continue to be accessed without the therapist’s counter-transference. This makes visible and privileges the client’s internal symbolic images and world.

Mental Health and Wellbeing.

Practicing the Skills You Need to Change Your Life

One question to boost your motivation.

Everyone is familiar with the struggle to retain skills once learned. It’s a process that is ever present in psychotherapy, so unpacking how it works there can provide useful lessons for us all.

Did You Know?

Ukrainian Easter eggs as an art of resistance

Ikon Essences

🎉🍴 We are thrilled to announce the launch of our very first Ikon cookbook – Ikon Essences! 🌍🌶️

We are celebrating cultural diversity by sharing the many flavors that make up our community! Share your favorite recipe with us – whether it’s a childhood classic, a travel-inspired dish, or a go-to favorite. Let’s come together to create something delicious and learn more about each other’s stories. Send your recipe, a little backstory, and a photo to events@ikon.edu.au!

Stay tuned for the digital download via the Student Hub. 📚👀

Meet Harley, Humphrey, and Bear

Welcome, Harley (left) and Humphrey (right)! These two bundles of joy joined our family three weeks ago. They are brother and sister and come from an only litter. They enjoy chasing balls, chewing most things, and eating lots of boiled chicken and yummy Greek yoghurt. They love their adopted big brother Bear, and the feeling is mutual, except when they are both crawling over his face!

Andy Fernie