Born in Saskatoon, raised in Ottawa and Edmonton, Della Burford has a BEd from Queens's University and a BSc in textiles from the University of Alberta, and a certificate from The New York School of Interior Design. For the past 25 years, she has been conducting storytelling, creative writing, and visual arts workshops for children and teachers throughout Canada and the United States. Before this she taught design at Humber College in Toronto for six years.Her stories have been adapted for plays in New York and preformed in Sweden, Italy , Guatemala, Japan and Korea. She is presently writing and painting on Vancouver Island. Published in 2009 was a healing story "Miracle Galaxy" and Dodoland Adventures. Recently she helped her husband with the design and editing of "Druidical Quest". Their website http://www.dodoland.com has had 14 million hits in 14 years.
PUBLICATIONS:
Dodoland Adventures. Azatlan Publishing,
Miracle Galaxy. Azatlan Publishing, 2009
The Out of the Ordinary Extraordinary Friends . Tale time Publishing , 1996
Untitled Poetry. Kingston, ON: Queen's University, 1991.
The Environmental Activity Guide. Azatlan, 1992.
The Magical Earth Secrets. Vancouver, BC: Western Canada Wilderness Committee, 1990.
Journey to Dodoland. Los Angeles: Bird Helmut, 1977.
AWARDS:
PIA Award, graphic arts award from the printers industries of America for Journey to Dodoland, 1999.
Della has presented on such topics as "Teaching the Environment in a Creative Way" , "Encouraging Creativity and Imagination"
and "Creating Healing Stories"
Workshop Description:
Della does many workshop related to here Environmental Activity Guide which has a cross curricular approach to teaching the Environment including Writing,Art,Drama,Music and Science.The projects are usually tailored for the school or community.
Della also does workshops in "Encouraging Creativity" which may combine art and writing. One popular one is Creating picture books. Being an illustrator as well as a writer Della often combines art and writing in her workshops - in her own writing sometimes the art comes first and sometimes the writing and then the art. She has a very intuitive painting process she calls "ocean painting" that images and ideas seem to emerge from and she has done this with school children, adults, handicapped children with little motor control and many others.
Della recently has done "Creating your own Healing Stories" which takes participants to a place to create their own healing hero/heroines and intuitive healing environment.
Since Della has special E.S.L. training she has taught storytelling and writing to international students from all over the world.
