About us
Umbral is an organization based in Mexico that promotes reflection, recreation and psychosocial care through the arts. Our goal is to provide tools for people and communities to recognize their resources and find emotional solutions for their well-being. We use the expressive arts as a way to dialogue and explore life's challenges, providing safe spaces for expression and vulnerability. We recognize the power of art to help humanitarian workers cope with adverse situations.
Our team
Shabrae Jackson
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Shabrae is an expressive arts educator with over 20 years of experience working in urban communities around the world and in the United States. Currently, she designs and facilitates arts-based psychosocial interventions in partnership with communities. In addition to her work with UMBRAL, she is co-founder of LudArtem, an organization that explores the intersection of arts and sports as a tool to build peace and provides training and organizational coaching for international groups. Shabrae has a bachelor's degree in social work, a master's degree in expressive arts focused on conflict transformation and peace education, and a graduate degree in sports for peace. She is currently starting her doctorate and plays the role of IEATE Regional Coordinator for Mexico.
Lyd Pensado
Lyd has a degree in Special Education with extensive experience in supporting migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking. He has a master's degree in Divinity and another in Mental Health, as well as various postgraduate degrees in pastoral psychology, art therapy, psychological first aid and logotherapy. She is also a certified spiritual director and is in the process of applying for the Association of Spiritual Directors of the European Union and the United States. As Executive Director of El Pozo de Vida AC and co-founder of Erase Violence AC, her primary focus is trauma restoration through the arts, spiritual development, and training professionals to broaden their intervention perspective and prolong their impact.
Improve resilience, mental and emotional health individually and collectively of individuals, groups and organizations to respond to the needs of their environment; through an arts-based approach.
We exist to create spaces for training, reflection, recreation and strengthening of care and self-care, providing tools that allow communities to find their own resources and explore routes of emotional and mental strengthening that enable them to face life.
Mission
May the expressive arts become an instrument of renewal for anyone interested in increasing self-awareness and the impact of the situations around them.