Overview
The Beacon Communal Center is a groundbreaking mental health center designed
to revolutionize traditional mental health practices by integrating narrative theory,
evidence-based approaches, improvisational and character creation techniques and
creative arts. Following a Clubhouse Model, The Center aims to empower
individuals by helping them craft and redefine their personal narratives, fostering
self-esteem, resilience, and better preparation for real-world challenges. This
program will combine evidence based therapeutic approaches alongside a uniquely
focused, creative approach to assist in solving our mental health crisis here in New
York State.
We are seeking support from the New York State Department of Mental Health to
assist in establishing this program, which hopes to connect with the hearts and
minds of our community. Using focused group work and individual sessions to help
build self-esteem, provide much needed mental health assistance, and create
knowledgeable, well-trained and skilled workers to help strengthen the local
workforce as well as the community. The program hopes to provide job and career
training in areas that provide well paying, sustainable work. Utilizing
apprenticeships with local businesses, mentoring, maker spaces, test kitchens,
video production and editing, incubator programs, music recording and
engineering as well as other opportunities as the program evolves.
Members will not only receive a unique, hands-on skill set, but will be nurtured
along the way by a team of focused and dedicated professionals. This program will
focus on our most vulnerable, under served, and under-resourced parts of our
community. We hope to utilize the per-existing talents of the members of the
community, including youth who have been incarcerated and are seeking new skills
and employment. One of the aims of the program is to offer counseling and
creative role playing, along with coaching in life skills and job training to help them
secure meaningful and rewarding employment. To be the artist and creator, not
just support for others who are making and creating. Our hope is to secure a
location in Beacon, NY that is accessible to the community and provides the needed
space to enact these programs with room for expansion to Newburgh, NY and
other areas in New York State. This space will also include the ability to hold
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performances and large presentations to involve the community in a myriad of
ways. These moments are where ideas, concepts, stories, and sharing happen and
are a core component to the work. They act as moments of catharsis as well as a
stop in time. A moment that can only be achieved during a performance or
presentation.