Aboriginal Culture and Creativity is a hands-on series of workshops and evening activities exclusively for women working as survival sex workers.   A core group of Aboriginal women are coached weekly in a workshop setting where they come together with storytelling and the creation of traditional arts, such as making button blankets, leather goods, cedar bark weaving and beading.  This group is informed by their coordinator and community elders and artists who come to share their knowledge. Traditional practices and protocols are followed and shared, as participants come from many different nations. Goals of the Aboriginal Culture and Creativity Core Group are to:         

•     Deepen respect of traditional protocols and practices and traditional teachings         
•    Learn to articulate one’s own experience and value knowledge gained from ancestors by creating a personal story.         
•    Use the act of co-creation as a way to move out of isolation and into positive relationships with each other,          
•    Take on new roles as peer-leaders by co facilitating workshops and Culture and Creativity evenings at the WISH Wellness    Centre.    
•     To demonstrate increased stability in participants’ lives by having 70% attendance at workshops.         
•    To experience success by completing individual small projects and a larger group project.

The Aboriginal Culture and Creativity Program is funded by the Anglican Healing Fund, Canadian Heritiage, the Vancouver Foundation and the Metropolitan Vancouver Urban Aboriginal Strategy.