Founder and Program Director of “Bonne Art Space” that offers communities a way to compassionately handle conflicts, heal from these conflicts, and learn what conflicts have to teach us. Also an an art program facilitating art workshops to incarcerated youth on Rikers Island.

From:

Bahamas & Greece.

Education: 

• Art
  School of Visual Arts, Bachelor's degree, Fine Arts

• The City College of New York, Master's degree, Art Education
  MA in Art Education with NY certification in grades K-12

• Mediator
  Certified by New York State Unified Court System
  Planning Change mediation certification program

  Convergent Facilitation Intensive Certification

• Apprenticeship: IMCR, the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, Inc.

• Completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy

• Restorative Justice Circles
  Training by Elizabeth Clemants
  Founder and Principal of Planning Change

  Bonne art Space started with the questions of how do we find solutions that work for everyone, how do you bring more empathy to the public conversation about personal, social, political issues, how do you create opportunities for expanded understanding and working towards solutions that transcend polarized positions. How to work internally to transform habits of blame and criticism so that we can have more harmonious relationships. 

I found that art, restorative justice circles and mediation as the pathways that will build empathy, restore dignity, enable healing, and strengthen communities as we strive toward a just society in which all lives have equal value.  If we are looking for action, beyond ourselves and our individual choices, I have a sense that it’s time for us to move in the direction of community. This is why I am thinking that the small-scale experiments like the ones I am involved with are a viable, even if modest option, for those of us who are not part of existing communities and who want to forge a pathway. I want all of us who see those possibilities to start coming together with others as much as we know how. I want us to find our collective visions and from within them walk towards the discomfort of losing our individual comfort and hyper-autonomy, so we can find choice within togetherness, as our evolutionary makeup designed us for.

My hope is to ignite a sense of possibility in those who become part of our workshops. Also promote mind & body connection, emotional fluency, self-esteem and compassionate community. Perhaps this will show up as a growing willingness to open one’s heart to others in times of conflict. Perhaps it will translate into more self-acceptance, or more capacity to reach for vulnerability. Whatever form it takes, I wish for a way to contribute and to inspire a sense of meaning, purpose, and power in your own life.

Bonne art space is working with incarcerated youth (under the age of 21), adult women and men on Rikers Island and communities that are devastated by incarceration and violence. My program uses the transformative power of the arts to help people develop skills to unlock their potential and succeed in the larger community.

Also a teaching artist for Acacia Network Housing’s shelter system and Loisaida, Inc., a New York Not-For-Profit Corporation.

Get in touch:

bonnie.mousis@gmail.com

Instagram: bonnie.mousis

Twitter: @bonnie_mousis

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com