< The Strengths Cafe has been kindly supported by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust >

What is the Strengths Café?

...a melting pot for the myriad of strengths-based stories that flow through

our door and inboxes every day.

...a gathering place for the feedback, reviews and users' stories that have grown from Innovative Resources' publications.

Cafes are traditionally places where people from all parts of the community come together. They are places for meeting with friends and colleagues to share ideas and insights. They are familiar venues where we can tell our stories and describe our experiences over the cheerful clink of glassware and hiss of steam from the cappuccino machine!

Like its real-life counterparts, the Strengths Café is forum for exchange. It's a place to hear the stories of those who use our publications, and discuss the many creative and respectful ways in which people are working with others. It's also a venue where people can learn about a whole range of unique and innovative practices being developed for a vast range of different situations and cultures.

The Strengths Café is the collection point for the feedback, reviews and user's stories that have grown from Innovative Resources publications. Many of the articles have been contributed by teachers, social workers, counsellors and therapists, and they reflect the variety of situations where our publications are used. You might not be surprised to learn that our card sets are used in inner-city schools and kindergartens. But did you know they are also used for trauma counselling in Uganda? Or for ice-breaking exercises in Bucharest? Would you have guessed that our Strength Cards are even featured on the walls of a Port Elliot fish'n'chip shop?!

By clicking on the 'Using the Tools' link, readers can navigate to the inspiring stories that accompany each of our publications. Some of our best-loved products, like The Bears cards, the Strength Cards and the I Can Monsters cards, come with a multitude of letters, articles and tips about how they can be used. But the Strengths Café also includes some of our less well-known publications which are teamed with information about their development, and interviews with the authors and illustrators who created them.

It's our intention that these pages will act as a valuable resource for those eager to discover the hope, optimism and strengths-based philosophy embedded in our publications, as well as for people who are already familiar with our products. We hope The Strengths Café will promote ideas and values, tools and frameworks for creating respectful ways of living, working and interacting with people everywhere.

And coming to the Carte de Jour soon.

A lot of amazingly creative text and artwork arrives on Innovative Resources' doorstep from authors and artists who, for all sorts of reasons, can't find a home for their work in the mainstream. Plans are afoot for The Strengths Café to give voice to these creative people. It will be a gallery for the articles, stories, poems and visual art that we would love to publish but until now have had no forum in which to do so.

So be ready to try the 'Writing' and 'Visual Art' links on our homepage next time you visit. We reckon all good cafes boast engaging artwork on their walls, and the Strengths Café will be no exception!

Go to:

Cafe home page

Innovative Resources' main shop website