Family & Friends

Family & Friends
Coming in July 2021
Hybrid Family Conference

Description

Workshops

Conference Leadership

Pricing

Description

Family and Friends has provided a safe and nurturing community for people of all ages, from all walks of life, for the past 50 summers at Ferry Beach! We come together in community to grow, explore, learn, and build strong and lasting relationships! Family and Friends is the perfect vacation whether you come as a couple, an individual, a young adult, with your extended family, grandparents, or any combination of these. There will be something for everyone, with morning workshops and activities for adults, young adults and children. Multigenerational activities are plentiful in the afternoons and evenings.

No one has to cook or clean up on this vacation! Come off the beach in the late afternoon, join friends for social hour, then join everyone in the DeWolfe Dining Hall, where we have a variety of choices for all kinds of palates.

So this summer, bring your spirit to the sea, stand upon the shore, and know you are home! Join us at Family & Friends 2020, and discover or rediscover the magic that happens in the Ferry Beach community!

Family and Friends Youth Groups
During the week while the parents are in their workshops the children get to have their own workshop with their peers. The groups are broken down by age such as Squishies (babies and toddlers with parent), 3-5 year olds (need to be potty trained), 6-7 year olds, 8-9 year olds, 10-12 year olds and Jr/Sr teens. The group age cutoffs can shift based on enrollment. The groups are led by at least 2 adults attending Family and Friends who have completed a background check. During the week you can expect to build a Covenant for the week, play games, create art and music, and learn about local ecology. The Jr/Sr teens typically will do a day trip.

Celebrate 50 Years of
Family & Friends with Us!

Food! Music! A parade honoring the generations that have attended and supported Family and Friends for 50 years. Brief presentations from folks attending from the 1970’s to the 2020’s. Barbecue! Whiffle ball. Sandcastles. Music on the porch. Bonfire in the Grove. Happy hour with special snacks. Lobster, cake. Jazz jam. A memorial wall of F&F members who have passed. A museum of 50 years of newsletters. A StoryCore activity in which attendees can record their memories for posterity. These are only SOME of the activities planned for an incredibly full and rich day memorializing Family and Friends 50th anniversary. Come and join the fun and the love and the hugs and the play.

Workshops

YogaDance: Radical Self-Acceptance in Motion - Chris Chance

Join us for an experience of whole body and mind exploration and expression inspired by Kripalu YogaDance, and informed by empowering, spirit-centered philosophical ideas (e.g., Pema Chodron, Tara Brach). Our time together as a dancing tribe will include an eclectic mix of contemplative and expressive practices that can open us to fuller self-acceptance and celebration of our unique energies as we move through life’s many transitions.

Participants will experience a daily dance to inspiring music of various rhythms and genres, learn about how movement may stimulate different yogic “chakras,” and be invited to participate in guided visualization, chanting, writing, “co-listening,” discussion, and movement exercises designed to help us explore and share Self in community. Find your prayer dance, become a lion in the jungle while moving to an African beat, meet and befriend your internal critic, giggle like a teenager, remember loss and embrace grief, reconnect with your deepest inner voice. . . it’s all possible! During YogaDance the facilitator will lead stretching warm-ups, suggest movements inspired by yoga poses, engage dancers in dance games, and offer guiding imagery and themes to inspire the body’s own dance, but not teach “right steps.” We all have an inner dancer longing to move, and they already know what feels good!

No prior dance or yoga experience is required, and verbal sharing is always optional. Movement is also optional, with the possibility of holding space together while sitting and absorbing the energy whenever needed. In the Kripalu Yoga tradition, each participant is encouraged to modify the facilitator’s suggestions in any way desired to honor body, mind, and spirit.

Please join us to CELEBRATE LIFE through dance!

Chris Chance was trained as a Kripalu YogaDance teacher and received certification through Megha-Nancy Buttenheim’s teacher training program in 2007. She went on to complete additional certifications in Classical Yoga as well as Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra (with Jennifer Reis, 2016). She has offered YogaDance-based workshops several previous years as part of the former “Family and Friends Week I,” and the wonderful dancing tribe has helped enrich and expand the workshop with the passage of time. Participants at Ferry Beach and at various NH classes offered have commented on the atmosphere of freedom created and the fun of feeling like a playful child again, in loving community. Chris is a practicing Clinical Psychologist, mother, singer, curious spirit, and New Hampshire UU.

For more information about this form of expressive dance, see Megha’s website at www.letyouryogadance.com
www.DrChrisChance.com.

Mosaic Art - Christine Burgess
Learn basics of creating mosaics!

Do you have cracked and chipped china that you just can’t throw away? Let’s create a mosaic to honor those pieces. Bring a simple design for an 8 x 10 piece (or smaller) and those dishes. After creating our individual pieces, we will create a larger legacy piece together to install at Ferry Beach as a commemoration the Family & Friends 50th Anniversary. Adhesive, grout, and sealer provided, bring your sense of color and design please.

Christine Burgess, visual art instructor, has taught several art classes at Ferry Beach over the past 8 years. She has attended Family and Friends for 28 years and created her first artwork there at a workshop offered about 18 years ago. Christine’s teaching philosophy is that everyone can express themselves through art and art changes lives.

Writing - Sharon O'Brien

Have you ever thought that you’d like to write your own life story, or invent one you give to a fictional character? Have you ever wanted to share writing with a supportive group and receive ideas and insights? “Everyone has a story that only he or she can tell,” writer Susan Monsky once said. In this writing workshop you will discover, explore, and shape a story (or stories). You will learn how to make your stories reach readers by drawing on the material of life and transforming it into a shaped narrative. Whether you are working in creative nonfiction, memoir, fiction or poetry you will find the workshop a place to explore your creativity. Because this is a workshop, the instructor will guide the class by giving writing prompts, although everyone is also free to develop their own. Writers will be encouraged to read their work aloud and will receive useful feedback and encouragement from the other writers. Everyone will have at least one individual appointment with the instructor, and there will be the opportunity to participate in a reading. No writing experience is necessary.

Sharon O’Brien is a teacher, writer, and reader who has taught creative writing at Dickinson College for more than 20 years. She began her own writing life as a biographer of the American novelist Willa Cather, and soon realized that biography is a form of story-telling. She took creative writing classes at Harvard Summer School and later taught creative nonfiction there. In 2004 she published her own memoir (U Chicago Press), The Family Silver, where she explored the ways in which history and culture can shape people’s lives. In addition to teaching memoir and personal essay to undergraduates, she teaches writing workshops and courses in the community. She fell in love with Ferry Beach the first time she came here, and is honored to be part of the long, vibrant tradition of writing workshop leaders in this community. She believes that writing carries spiritual and emotional weight and has the power to create empathy.

Song Writing - Nick Bloom

Have you ever felt the desire to express yourself through song? Do you find yourself making up tunes in your head? Or are you simply curious about what it would be like to transform your thoughts and feelings into music? Whether you’ve written 1,000 songs or none, the Songwriting workshop is an opportunity to pause and spend time with music and writing. We will be spending some time learning a few of the most common forms of American popular songwriting, including blues, gospel, country, ballad, and others. Then, you will have the opportunity to write and workshop your own songs, under the loving tutelage of Family & Friends’ own Nick Bloom. We will work collaboratively, writing songs as individuals, in smaller groups, and as a whole class. We will also try to make time this year to create a song (or songs!) that celebrates the place of Family & Friends/Ferry Beach in our lives, in honor of the 50th Anniversary.

If you have a guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, or any other instrument to accompany yourself, you are highly encouraged to bring it. However, no accompaniment or songwriting experience is necessary to participate in this workshop.

Nick Bloom is a songwriter, singer, strummer, and lover of many forms of song. He has written and performed his own music for more than a decade in many parts of the country, though his favorite place to write and perform has always been the Rose Pavilion at Ferry Beach. Nick has released two albums of his own music with his New York City-based band, Bold Forbes, and regularly performs country-folk music in his current home city, Austin, Texas. Nick cannot wait to once again lead this songwriting workshop at Family & Friends, one of the most creatively fertile, soulful places on earth.

Hydrotherapy - Marty Burgess

Once again the focus of Hydrotherapy will be on stand-up paddle boarding! This is an introductory course on the handling of a SUP (stand up paddle board), water safety, launching and landing techniques, and paddling techniques. Hydrotherapy is an open workshop: you can join for a day or the entire week, but the number of participants is limited each day to 12 both for safety and to allow for personalized instruction.

Things you will need: paddle board, paddle and life jacket, water shoes, beachwear (bathing suit or clothing suitable to swim in), sunscreen, a sense of adventure.

If you have your own SUP be sure to bring it! Improving paddling technique and board handling skill will enhance your enjoyment of your board. If you need a paddle board, I have 4 available for rent for each day and there are outfitters nearby that rent them. We also have a variety of wetsuits for your use along with safety gear to try.

See you on the water! And, occasionally, in it. :)

Marty Burgess is a licensed Maine guide and experienced stand-up paddle boarder. Questions? Feel free to contact Marty at martyfb7@gmail.com.

JP's Jazz Jam - John "JP" Pearson

After many years of being a casual "pick up" activity, JP'S JAZZ JAM will debut as a fully scheduled and official workshop during Family & Friends' 50th Anniversary Week. Participants will enjoy creating community as they share their INSTRUMENTAL AND VOCAL musical skills.
As in the past, ALL LEVELS OF MUSICAL ABILITY ARE WELCOME as long as you come with your own instrument (even those you may not think of as traditional "Jazz" instruments - we'll make it work and make you happy!). Make certain to pack a desire to explore, expand, and create new abilities among supportive friends.
We are excited that the new "scheduled" meeting time will provide a better opportunity to address and nurture individual needs and preferences along with providing more time for small group and ensemble projects. In addition to greater active participation, we will also be able to spend some meaningful moments listening to recordings of Jazz masters as examples and inspiration for developing styles and ideas for improvisation and performance.
In addition to your own instrument, it is highly recommended that you bring a personal recording device (cell phone/tablet/??) and music manuscript notebook for individual practice purposes outside of our sessions. You might want to bring a folding music stand and any sheet music you might like to work with.
As in the past we will be developing a total group performance piece for Thursday's "INTER-GENERATIONAL TNT show". We are all so very much looking forward to seeing and playing with as many new and old Family & Friends musicians from years gone by in honor of this 50th Anniversary celebration!

Mr. Pearson retired after 35 years of teaching music in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, public schools, 29 of which he served as Band Director and Music Department Coordinator at Bassick High School. He has been a music educator serving private- and college-level students for more than 40 years. He enjoys a legacy of former students who have become world-class performers, educators, and active music industry participants of note. He now focuses on improving his own music skills and expanding his performance opportunities. He was introduced to the trumpet in fourth grade, began private instruction with Victor Salvo in White Plains, New York, and continued to study the trumpet through graduate school, studying with James Maxwell of the Tonight Show Band in New York City. Mr. Pearson has been a member of such musical groups as The Bridgeport Downtown Cabaret Theatre Orchestra, The Penfield Pavilion Concert Band, The Connecticut Symphonic Band, The American Festival Concert Band, The Jazz-Haven Big Band and The New Haven Jazz Orchestra, The Organizers and Classics wedding combos, The (U.U.) Revelation Jazz Ensemble, The John Pearson Jazz Quartet, The Alumni Swing Band, The New Additions Jazz Orchestra and freelances with numerous other groups. Mr. Pearson has also been fortunate enough to perform with such notables as trumpeter Clark Terry, saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Marion Meadows, and pianist Billy Taylor. His prolific musical experience is complemented with both a B.S. and M.S. in Music Education.

Continuing to Leave a Lasting Impression - Craig Urian

Last year we finished off yet another Lasting Impression project with the completion of our new board walk! All who come to Ferry Beach can now safely traverse through and over the wooded dunes to the ocean. In previous years, Family & Friends' volunteers erected the "Safe on Blue" play structure and built pews for Grove Chapel. In 2020 we will again work on a project to enhance the campus and enrich our souls. The workshop provides not only an opportunity to contribute to the beach with new, improved structures but also gives us the time for connection, camaraderie, and stories. And it allows us to continue the legacy of Family & Friends, this time in honor of the conference's 50th anniversary!

Craig Urian has been affiliated with Ferry Beach's Family & Friends Conference for more than 13 years. He contributed to the construction of the three marquee projects mentioned above and has enjoyed seeing his evolving family benefit from those investments. At the 2019 F&F Conference, Craig spearheaded the debut of this workshop and led a group in constructing a significant portion of the new boardwalk. He generously agreed to lead the workshop again at F&F's 50th anniversary week.

Conference Leadership

Please call 207-282-4489 x1 or email info@ferrybeach.org for questions related to the programing or to get in touch with the conference coordinators.

Pricing

Pricing (Includes Conference Fees and Meals)	Stay tuned for 2021 pricing information.
Lodging	Lodging Prices Vary. See our Lodging Page for pricing information.
Membership	Individual Membership: $30 Family Membership: $50 Membership must be paid to attend any Ferry Beach program and is due annually. See our Membership Page to learn more and to purchase or renew a membership.
Meals	See our Dining Center Page for menus and pricing.

Or Call 207-282-4489 x1 to Register by Phone