My Story ...
I began forging a path between art and therapy, when in 2005 during my Fine Arts Bachelor studies, I became involved in an arts community project in Togo, Africa. That experience of working with children with disabilities in a holistic way opened my view of how art can be so empowering for children's self-esteem and expression and motivated me to pursue the bridge where art and therapy meet.
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Before graduating with an MSc in Art Psychotherapy from Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University in 2012, I worked in the community arts and development sector with a wide range of vulnerable groups, from refugee and asylum seekers, to homeless young people as well as rural and indigenous communities in both Bolivia and Nepal.
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My Masters' years gave me the psychotherapeutic and counselling framework to further facilitate the groups and individuals I worked with to explore underlying issues through both image making and talking. During this period I trained in a secure unit for young people dealing with trauma, loss and attachment issues. Subsequently I went on to acquire further skills at a counselling centre for individuals affected by childhood sexual abuse.
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I have worked in the Adult Mental Health Unit in Canberra, with adults with acute mental health issues, working in an interdisciplinary environment to support patients towards their recovery and transition back into the community, through the means of creative and expressive arts.
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After having overcome breast cancer in 2018, I have experienced first hand the benefits of art therapy for myself and my children in my recovery process. I am as ever more passionate to share the arts as a tool and framework in enabling and sustaining positive change.
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I am motivated to encourage personal and social change by working together with a wide range of people to realise their potential. To creatively come together in our diversity to challenge ourselves, empower those around us, build on our capacities, acceptance and self-esteem, in a way that will yield positive changes and outcomes for a healthier well being.