FAT Moon Podcast

FAT Moon Podcast

By Slow Fish StudioHealth & FitnessMental Health
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FAT Moon Podcast episodes

  • Ed Kuczaj - Art Psychotherapist (Ireland)

    *Advising listeners that Ed briefly discusses child abuse within the education system during this episode*


    Ed Kuczaj is the former Head of the Department of Arts in Health and Education at Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, Ireland which is part of Munster Technological University, retiring in 2017. He started as a course coordinator there in 2000 when it was a PG Dip in Art Th, moving to MA level in 2004. 


    In 2013/ 2016 he helped curate, along with Louise Foott/ Anne Boddaert/ Maeve Dineen, the Outside In and Perceptions exhibitions, which showcased the work of artists from supported studio settings internationally.


    Prior to the position in Cork, he worked in the NHS in the UK, as a clinician and Arts Therapy manager in the area of learning disabilities. He has published a number of articles and contributed to books in this area particularly around the area of loss and bereavement. During his time in the UK, he was a council member of the British Association of Art Therapists and also Vice Chair for a number of years. 


    Since retiring he has been involved in the Cork/ BVI Art Therapy Initiative, which worked in the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, shortly after the occurrence of Hurricane Irma in 2017, working in schools and with community groups there. 


    He was also chair of the Irish Association of Creative Arts Therapists in 2018 – 2020 and is still involved in the association's work. He also works as a supervisor and is an advisor for the Soearth Project in Kill, Co Kildare, as well as Academic Council Chair at the Children's Therapy Centre. He is also currently an external examiner of the MA in Art Psychotherapy at the University of Ulster. 

     

    Ed also engages in his own creativity through photography/ painting and sculpture and exhibits occasionally in Cork and Co Waterford where he is based. 


    Irish Assoc of Creative Arts Therapists www.iacat.ie 

    www.soearthprojects.com

    LinkedIn


    You can support the show via a monthly membership at ⁠Patreon

    56 min
  • Meghna Girish - Art Therapist (India)

    Ms Meghna Girish is a qualified, trained and practicing Art Therapist and an Artrepreneur from Kerala, India. Presently she is a doctoral student and a research scholar at the University of Haifa, Israel in the field of Art therapy.

    She successfully completed her MA in Creative Arts Therapies, from the University of Haifa, Israel and her Bachelor's in Psychology from Union Christian College, India. Post her Masters, she successfully completed a research thesis in association with a project at the University of Haifa.

    She has worked with a Mumbai-based NGO, which fights against human trafficking as part of an art-therapy project for the inmates at the shelter home. Her expertise in therapeutic practice is in trauma and abuse. Meghna collaborates with various shelter homes spread out across India and also educational institutions taking art therapy workshops.

    She's an Executive Board member of TATAI (The Art Therapy Association of India) which works towards credible practice and advocacy of the field of Art Therapy in India.

    Along with workshops, seminars and private art therapy sessions for clients, Meghna is active on social media, specifically Instagram. She has an art therapy awareness page named Art From the Heart and runs an online art store called Beauty from Ashes where she sells her art. 

    Linkedin

    Beauty From Ashes

    Art From The Heart


    You can support the show via a monthly membership at ⁠⁠patreon.com/GreeneMoonStudios

    27 min
  • Dr. Carla Van Laar - Creative Arts Therapist (Australia)

    You can support the show via a monthly membership at ⁠patreon.com/GreeneMoonStudios


    Carla is an Artist and Creative Arts Therapist based in Boon Wurrung Country, Inverloch, Victoria. She brings decades of experience working with people and the arts for well-being in community, justice, health, education, and private practice contexts.

    Experiential ways of knowing underpin Carla’s therapeutic work, including embodied attunement and arts-based responding, informed by trauma-centered, strengths-based, existential, and narrative approaches. She loves to share creative practices as ways of knowing and being.

    Carla’s book Bereaved Mother’s Heart (2007) broke social taboos about maternal grief. Seeing Her Stories (2020) presents Carla’s research into making Women’s stories visible through art. Her most recent publication is “Art Therapy First Aid: Growing Capacity with Art Therapists in Communities Affected by Australian Bushfires”(in Scarce, J. (Ed.) 2022).

    An educator in the field of Creative Art Therapy since 2001, Carla received an Artist Fellowship at RMIT’s creative research lab, “Creative Agency” in 2018. She is a lead campaigner in the ACTivate Arts Therapy collective, and Founding Director of the Creative Mental Health Forum. Carla insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnectedness of all life, and is an agent of social change.

     Carla is the Convenor of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA)’s College of Creative and Experiential Therapies, and in this role, she is dedicated to working for access to creative therapies for everyone.


    carlavanlaar.com

    51 min
  • Michelle Dixon - Art Therapist (Qatar)

    Michelle has worked as a registered art therapist across a variety of areas including General Medical, Pediatric Oncology, Palliative Care, and Bereavement Support. Over the last five years, Michelle has established the first specialized art therapy service in Qatar at Sidra Medicine, Women, and Children’s Hospital. The role involved promoting children’s mental health and included a pilot online art therapy research project with adolescents experiencing anxiety and depression. Currently, Michelle has started a new role as a museum liaison, developing programs and social content about the importance of children’s mental health. 

     

    linkedin.com/in/michelle-dixon-697234a8 

     @michelledadixon

    www.instagram.com/michelledadixon/


    You can support the show via a monthly membership at ⁠patreon.com/GreeneMoonStudios⁠

    30 min
  • Sam Leicester - Art Psychotherapist (UK)

    Sam completed his Masters in Art Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths College London in 2013 and has a 15-year working history in the creative, educational, and social care sectors. 

    Before training as a therapist, Sam worked with young people in Brighton and London as a manager of specialised housing projects with Looked After Children in the UK care system and is also a trained Further Education (FE) art teacher. 
    Since graduating with his Masters, he has continued to focus his work with children and young people in a variety of settings with different client groups including SEMH (Social, Emotional, and Mental Health) schools, specialist ASD education, forensic, and residential children’s homes in the South East of England.
    Sam also maintains a private practice in Brighton, and is a member of the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC) and also, the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT).       
    ⁠linkedin.com/in/sam-leicester⁠⁠www.samleicester.com⁠

    Twitter: ⁠⁠@esseltherapy 


    You can support the show via a monthly membership at ⁠⁠patreon.com/GreeneMoonStudios⁠

    38 min
  • Alana Stewart - Art Therapist (Australia)

    Alana Stewart is a Registered Art Therapist practicing on the land of the Wurrundjeri People of the Kulin nation (Melbourne, Australia).

    She deeply values art, creativity, and nature as sources of healing and integral aspects of human life that promote health. With the lived experience of neurodivergence, she primarily works with individuals who also have neurodivergence, such as autism and ADHD, as well as other disability and commonly co-occurring experiences of complex trauma.
    Alana has been working in the disability field since 2012, drawing inspiration from her two passionate parents who are lived experience disability advocates.
    Recently, she has almost completed her course in forest therapy guiding with the International Nature and Forest Therapy Alliance, and runs her private practice, Finding Wellbeing, alongside being the director of the Yellow Gum Art Therapy Studio, a studio location which now multiple arts therapists practice from. 
    Private practice: ⁠www.finding-wellbeing.com ⁠ 
    ⁠@findingwellbeing⁠
    Studio Location and Forest Therapy: ⁠www.yellowgum.art ⁠ 

    28 min
  • Lama Majaj - Art Therapist (Jordan)

    Lama Majaj is an Art Psychotherapist, a visual artist, and an educator with seventeen years of program development and strategic planning experiences in arts education, healthcare, and humanitarian settings.

    Recognized for demonstrating a natural aptitude for program optimization, project management research, and development; Lama has held positions internationally in the Middle East, Asia, and Australia where she founded the Arts in Healthcare program at The Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre (ONJCWRC).   An invited as a Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) consultant with global humanitarian organizations to implement trauma-informed care and build capacity for resilience in Kurdish-Iraq, Cambodia, and Dominica.  
    Lama’s art therapy practice integrates humanistic psychotherapy with bodywork, movement, and the expressive arts to support individuals. Clinical skills are based on psychotherapy and counseling practices, attachment theory, and mindful-informed approaches.   
    She is a certified Heartmath Mentor and coach HeartMath offering highly effective, practical solutions for increasing employee performance, reducing workplace stress, anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness, and increasing resilience, productivity, and performance.  Registered member of the Australian, New Zealand, and Asian Creative Arts Therapy Association (ANZACATA). She provides supervision for arts therapists and is a part-time lecturer at the MA Art Therapy Program at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.  
    Currently, a Dynamic Embodiment™️ and BodyMind Dancing™️ candidate focused on integrating skilled touch, movement, & compassionate dialogue to help individuals relieve stress, find enhanced expressiveness, and balance all aspects of the body and psyche.
    In her free time, she enjoys biking along the coastline and spontaneous dips in the ocean. 
    Lama is available for Individual and Group supervision, please email for inquiries: [email protected] linkedin.com/in/lama-majaj-ma-athr-38b910216@lamammajaj28


    You can support the show via a monthly membership at ⁠patreon.com/GreeneMoonStudios⁠

    33 min
  • Naomi Pears-Scown - Arts Therapist (Aotearoa / New Zealand)

    Naomi is a registered Arts Therapist, clinical supervisor, and research supervisor in Auckland, Aotearoa/ New Zealand.

    She has ten years of experience working in mental health, and her current practice is with survivors of sexual violence.
    She is currently undertaking a PhD and in her doctoral work, she is interested in the position of Creative Arts Therapy as a mental health profession in New Zealand, particularly paying attention to the many entangled phenomena involved in becoming a professional here.
    She is drawn to the natural world for inspiration and creativity in this work and has published some of her early doctoral writing in the Journal of Creative Arts Therapy.
    Naomi is available for supervision, please email for inquiries: [email protected]

    www.naomipearsscown.com@naomipearsscown


    You can support the show via a monthly membership at patreon.com/GreeneMoonStudios

    33 min

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