www.innovativeresources.org - 137 McCrae Street, Bendigo - 54432 0500

St Luke’s Innovative Resources137 McCrae StBendigo 3550 Australiainfo@innovativeresources.orgwww.innovativeresources.orgphone: (03) 5442 0500fax: (03) 5442 0555international (+61 3)

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The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

SOONVolume 37 - June 2010IR Home

St. Luke's

Seriously Optimistic Online NewsletterSeriously Optimistic Online Newsletter

St Luke’s Innovative Resources first published The Bears nearly two decades ago and they have found their way into countless conversations ever since.

Their simple but profound gift is to bring us alive by giving us a voice to help express our feelings – who we are at our deepest places.

All those years ago we created the first set of 48 cards which was called The Bear Family to reflect our intention to provide a family sculpting tool.

This first incarnation of delightful bear characters

was released onto an unsuspecting public

in 1995.

One of our own family workers at St Luke’s decided to choose a bear that matched

her mood each day. She stuck

the card onto her office door to

warn her colleagues about what they might expect if she was interrupted that day. This

became known as the ‘Tsunami Warning’!

After the first print run sold out quickly, and because of the broad range of

ways people were using the cards, we decided to call them simply The Bears from then on.

Over their lifetime of 15 years, the physical appearance of the original bear characters evolved but with thousands of copies sent to all corners of the globe we thought it time for a freshen up.

Designer and illustrator, Ben Wood, was given the challenge of creating a different set of bear characters to meet a range of criteria, they would need to be as appealing as the first set but with enhanced expressions and body language, and covering a wider range of emotions.

The new set of cards would also need to incorporate some of the other suggestions users had made over the years, such as numbering the cards for easier identification.

So we set about updating the family portraits and we have now taken delivery of The Bears - 2010 model.

This new edition of The Bears will enable the original idea to live on for decades – still cute and colourful – with even more human traits and emotional states. Characters that are

“We live our whole

lives in the company of

our feelings and emotions.

They cast their spell over

us constantly. They

influence every

decision we

make.”

See all 48 expressions in our booklet

If the point is sharp, and the arrow is swift, it can pierce through the dust no matter how thick.

Bob Dylan (1941 - )

as simple, colourful and as cute as their predecessors.

Look closely; listen to what they are saying (albeit, mutely), and you may discover their wisdom—their capacity to convey our feelings in ways that even the eloquent prose of the great wordsmiths may not.

Simple, colourful and cute? Yes.

Ways to express who we are at our deepest places? Also yes!

The Bears are $49.50 (inc. GST) and can be ordered direct from our website www.innovativeresources.org or by emailing us at info@innovativeresources.org

As with all our products, there is a comprehensive booklet explaining the origins of our card sets and opportunities our cards sets unveil.

You can flip through the booklet on our website by clicking on the image at right.

WE HAD SOME GREAT SPECIALS IN OUR LAST EDITION - SOON 36There was an excellent response to the discounted books we published in our last edition of SOON and we cleared a lot of the backlist..... but there's more!So if you're still in the marketplace for these or other great specialss give us a call or check out the Specials' button on our home page.

OR JUST CLICK HERE

You’ve got to be original, because if you’re like someone else, what do they need you for?

Bernadette Peters, Inside the Actors Studio

NEW BOOKS AT IR

KLUTZ is here!We love our little bookshop here at Innovative

Resources and everyone involved is always on the look out for something interesting to complement

the Shelf List.

So when Russell and Noel (The creative guy and the new business guy) went to a recent

Toy Fair, the KLUTZ stall took their fancy – well, Russell’s fancy because of his

experience and Noel followed closely in behind because he was there to learn (and keep

a leash on Russell).

Anyway, the KLUTZ range of ‘hands-on, interactive materials that while being playful do have a serious intent which is to open up

conversations in different ways’ is inhouse at our little bookshop. This great range of products is

the brainchild of a group of people whose corporate mission statement said: Create

wonderful things, be good, have fun.

Can’t go wrong here we thought!

If you are familiar with KLUTZ you’ll be impatient to get in and have a look or cruise the website.

If this exciting range of How To and What To Do books is new to you we guarantee it will excite the imagination and satisfy those most inquisitive little

minds around the house for hours.

Titles such as: How To Draw Funny, The Klutz Book of Balloon Twisting, The Most Amazing

Thumb Doodles Book, Draw Thumb People, Klutz Build-A-Book and The Encyclopedia of Immaturity, to name a few, will create hours of fun and special titles

like Just Between Friends are designed for specific age groups with pages of super secret-keeping stuff.

I counted 16 different titles and they are all easily viewed on a shiny rotating display stand. (They

threw that in for us as a new stockist - whow aren’t we important!)

Yea, well, all the titles are listed on our website www.innovativeresources.org - do a search on KLUTZ and they will all pop up for you - order straight from the

page or, if you’re in the neighbourhood, drop in and give the display stand a spin.

While we were there we also got some great new puppets (anatomically correct).

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887), Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

Mailout completedyes, finally

it’s been postedWe’ve given it plenty of plugs, published it on

our web page (and plugged that) and pushed it to people who provoked us, but, finally, we can

pronounce that it’s been polished off.

It’s been produced, proofed, perused, published (on the Web) and finally printed and published (in hardcopy) and, now, it’s been posted out to

participants positioned in our database.

If you haven’t been presented with one then phone us or post us a message and we promise to propel one in your direction

- post haste.

The catalogue is all done and Cristina and Nola check over the printed product. Seems Noel is just posing.....

LOOKOUTit's that end of financial year

steamtrain heading our way.

All the staff are geared up and our shelves are stocked up so if you want that order out

quickly, please get them in quickly.

Lighthouse Resources of Brisbane invite you to engage leading solution-focussed therapist, Ben Furman MD,

during his extended Australian tour.Based in Finland, Ben is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and trainer in solution-focussed

approaches specialising in the areas of children’s behaviours and workplace relations. Ben’s extended stay in Australia this year (from June to August) provides an unprecedented opportunity to engage him in person.Solution-focussed psychology has been successfully applied in diverse areas such as education, counselling, organisational development and management. Your workplace setting can experience the benefits of applying solution-focussed approaches in your work with others, as well as for your organisation, staff and teams.

Workshops Details

Ben Furman..... workshops in Australia

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sun-dial in the shade?

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

In 2004, St Luke’s Innovative Resources published Kids’ Skills: playful and practical solution-finding with children, the English translation of Ben’s internationally-acclaimed book outlining his 15-step method for working alongside children.

Now, we are delighted to publish his latest book, Kids’ Skills in Action, which

is a collection of stories and conversations between professionals and the children and families with whom they work.

This book enables us to ‘witness’ the Kids’ Skills method being applied by skilled counsellors, psychologists, social workers and teachers from around the world. These re-creations of conversations from actual practice enable readers to be ‘present’ as the children develop, celebrate and pass on their skills, while at the same time, the privacy of the children and families has been meticulously protected. For this reason, no real names have been used in the stories.

Kids’ Skills.... now in Action

Kids' Skills in Action is on the press as we speak, please check our website for details.or CLICK here to see the Ben Furman products on our website.

MELBOURNEWorkshop Name: Kids Skills

Tuesday August 10Holmesglen College of TAFE Conference

Centre, Corner Warrigal & Batesford Roads, Chadstone, Victoria

Time: 9.30 -4.30

BRISBANEWorkshop Name: Kids Skills

Tuesday July 13thLighthouse Resources Training Centre, Kyabra

Street, Runcorn QueenslandTime: 9.30 -4.30

See www.lighthouseresources.com.au