Profile
I am a dramatherapist, storyteller and musician. I work with a close team of colleagues to teach the Sesame MA in Drama and Movement Therapy programme at Central. Over the past two decades, a main interest has been the international development of arts therapy education and pedagogy. I am also a writer and researcher and a candidate on the EdD programme at the University of Winchester. My research area is traditional storytelling in the training of arts therapists internationally.
I first discovered the psychological importance of the arts as a young musician, collaborating with theatre artists in a voluntary sector organisation. My practice led me to develop projects with drama and music, working towards performances as part of the Brighton Festival in the early 1990s. For many years, I have collaborated with the Serbian theatre company DAH Teatar, which brings together testimony, storytelling and a particular training ethos.
I have worked clinically as a dramatherapist in a forensic psychiatric service and was part of the arts therapies team who developed one of the first arts therapies departments in the country. I went on to complete my MA at the University of Roehampton and study arts psychotherapy at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education. This was alongside my clinical practice, a continued interest in Jungian psychology and collaborations with European educators and different arts projects.
I was part of a consultation group that worked with the Council for the Professions Supplementary to Medicine (CPSM) in the development of the standards of education and training for dramatherapists. This work led on to the adoption of approved standards of the Health and Care Profession Council (HCPC).
Keynote lectures have included for conferences of BADth (British Association of Dramatherapists), ECArTE (European Consortium of Arts therapies Education), and The Arts in Therapy Conference at the University of Hong Kong.
Over the past decade, I have been closely involved in the work of ECArTE. I am currently Chair and am leading on projects that are developing standards of education and liaising with educational policy departments. I am a conference director for its biennial conferences.
Areas of Expertise
- Jungian psychology and dramatherapy methodology
- Myth and fairy tale in the practice of dramatherapy, arts therapy and education
- The Sesame approach to drama and movement therapy
- Clinical supervision of dramatherapy placement practice
- Critical and cultural approaches to creativity and play
- Philosophical approached to the education of the imagination
PhD Supervision
To date, I have supervised two PhD thesis to completion in areas including Sesame practice and how it can inform actor training methods and an investigation into the praxis of mask, using a methodology based on amplification.
Key Publications
2021. Dramatherapy, the Nature of Interruption, Routledge
2021. Imagining Windmills, Trust, Truth and The Unknown in the Arts Therapies, Routledge
2019. Traditions in Transition in the Arts Therapies, University of Plymouth Press
2017. Dramatherapy, Reflections and Praxis, Palgrave Macmillan
2017. Cultural Landscapes in the Arts therapies, University of Plymouth Press
2015. ‘Not form, but the marrow of forms’ Reflections on Lorca’s duende in the arts therapies, in Through the Looking Glass: Dimensions of Reflection in the Arts Therapies, edited by Richard Hougham, Salvo Pitruzzella and Sarah Scoble (Plymouth: University of Plymouth Press), pp. 13-23.
2013. ‘A practice-based research enquiry into therapeutic presence’ FILM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DimVzSwmUkg&t=2216s
External Practice
I have been a director of five ECArTE International Arts Therapies conferences, including:
- 2019, University of Alcala, Spain
- 2017, Ignatianum University, Krakow, Poland
