Creatives and mental health professionals gathered for the third Saturday offering of the 1st Cordillera Connection (CordiCon): Voices and Creative Collaboration, an event designed to ensure wellness and collaboration go hand in hand.
The August 22 summit opened its morning session with the Cordillera School of Digital Arts (CSDA) presenting “How to make authors and animators meet and match.” Led by CSDA Chief Executive Officer Raul Boncan Jr., Chief Operating Officer Donna Boncan, and School Director Niño Seriosa, the presentation outlined practical frameworks for cross-industry networking. The leadership team detailed strategies for authors to collaborate effectively with digital animators to adapt written literary works into animated formats.
CordiCon is organized by Art Heals, a local non-profit dedicated to using creative spaces for public expression and communal healing. To support grassroots creative talent, Art Heals offered free exhibition spaces, pop-up tables, and subsidized book stalls for selected local creators.
The afternoon session focused on artist wellness and featured an interactive discussion on “Wellness and Mental Health,” facilitated by Dr. Sally I. Maximo. Dr. Maximo is a professor of psychology at Saint Louis University and a licensed clinical psychologist with three decades of experience in counseling and mental health education.
During her presentation, Dr. Maximo—who also serves as a board-certified clinical chaplain and consultant for the Philippine Mental Health Association-Cordillera—addressed common psychological strain factors affecting creative professionals, including burnout and emotional stress. Drawing from her research on resilience and recovery, she provided strategies for maintaining mental health while sustaining demanding creative careers.
The gathering marks the third weekend of a monthlong campaign designed to accommodate the community’s creative pacing, generate recurring traffic, and foster industry engagement. Following the August 8 launch that featured regional authors and craft stalls, this weekend highlighted performance, literary arts, and modern publishing dynamics.
The summit concluded with discussions on establishing ongoing support networks for local authors and visual artists across the Cordillera region.
