Expressive Arts and Narrative Practice

Gabrielle Brady is an award-winning Australian/ British Director and Screenwriter based in Berlin. Gabrielle’s debut feature film ‘Island of the Hungry Ghosts,' made in collaboration with narrative therapist Poh Lin Lee, was nominated for an Independent Spirit award, Cinema Eye Spotlight award and won the Best Documentary award at the Tribeca film festival, Mumbai International film festival and the Australian independent film awards. The film has been shown at major international film festivals as well as in cinemas worldwide and has received over 40 international prizes.

Gabrielle's work has been featured at the Museum of Moving Image NY, the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, and The Eye in Amsterdam. Her work has been selected as a ‘Critics Pick’ by the New York Times and described by the Guardian as ‘Fierce and compassionate.’ Gabrielle has recently completed two short films for gallery distribution, ‘Remain’ and ‘River Undain’ commissioned by the Art Gallery of NSW Australia and the Prototype platform. Gabrielle is in production on her next feature-length documentary project, ‘The Wolves Always Come at Night’, and is in development on her first feature fiction project, ‘Bird Colony’ (W.T). Gabrielle studied Documentary Direction for three years at La Escuela Internacional de Cine (EICTV) in Cuba. She has previously studied Theatre Performance. She is a Berlinale Doc Station and Talents Alumni.

Piper Clyborne is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and has over 20 years of experience working with diverse populations in a multitude of clinical and non-clinical contexts from a Narrative Therapy approach. Piper began her career as a social justice advocate and community worker, providing services for individuals living with HIV/AIDS, women-identified, and children subjected to multiple forms of violence and trauma, and international social work with impoverished communities. Her professional career began with an undergraduate degree in human services and political science from Evergreen State College in 2004. In 2008, she completed a master’s in social work with a concentration in mental health from The University of Vermont. Piper’s career as a psychotherapist has primarily been focused on serving communities most marginalized by political injustice and trauma so they may reclaim their voices and collective power/influence. Most recently, Piper spends a great deal of time loitering in the arts to bring creative inspiration, wonderment, and new possibilities into her work.

Ingrid B Guerrieri (she/ella) is a clinician and art facilitator supporting creative explorations of identity, relational ethics, and intentional living. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and an Expressive Arts Therapist based in California, specifically in the southern borderland Tijuana-San Diego. Ingrid is a Colombian immigrant, identifies as a cisgender queer woman, and loves nature, cooking, eating, and dancing salsa; she is also a free-spirited visual artist who believes in the power of community, play, ritual, and imagination.

Ingrid has worked in community mental health settings for about a decade and has recently transitioned to private practice. She has a preference for working with adults, individually and in partnership; and is interested in supporting explorations of sexual diversity, partnership configurations, and intimacy. Ingrid is enthusiastic about promoting community-based art explorations.

Ingrid works in English, Spanish, and Spanglish, and has had the privilege of being trusted to work with HIV impacted communities, couples, LGBTQIA+ folx, and social service workers and therapists. Her private practice (CreArte Counseling) provides virtual clinical services in California, and facilitates community art making experiences nationally and internationally. She is also a founder member of the Art Flow Collective, a group of women of color that offer Expressive Art workshops to underserved communities in San Diego.

Ingrid is grateful for the knowledge and resilience of human and non-human ancestors and relations, and for being entrusted with the stories of those with whom she has had the privilege to work.

Jennifir Bailes Hart was trained as a Dance/Movement Therapist and Mental Health Counselor at Antioch New England and has worked as a counselor and expressive arts therapist since 1999. She has worked with individuals across many life stages, from infants to elders. Her current work is centered on adults undergoing life transitions, members of the LGBTQ+ community, parents supporting neurodiverse children, and neurodiverse adults, particularly those navigating and responding to ADHD.

Jen was thrilled to encounter post-modern approaches and the narrative metaphor as a new clinician when she was part of an Early Childhood and Family mental health team with Peggy Sax as a training and technical consultant and found Narrative Therapy fit in perfectly with her undergraduate focus on post-modern literary theory, queer theory, and textual criticism. She was lucky enough to complete continuing education with Michael White, Shona Russell, Maggie Carey, and Gay Stockell, among others, and found her curiosity and compassionate spirit as a practitioner blossomed in the light of the narrative metaphor, connecting her to her clients and craft in a satisfying and enriching way.

Jen is interested in art, music, movement, and writing as fundamental forms of creative expression and identity investigation and as ways to discover and explore metaphor and personal and universal symbolism. She has cultivated and treasured her own artistic practice for many years and has found joy, connection, depth, and wonder in creating art in many forms. She has noticed the learning she gathers from process-oriented work is as valuable as that gleaned from the final product, and she enjoys sharing these processes with her clients.

Poh Lin Lee is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to her practice through multiple experiences and relationships as a narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant. Since 2004 Poh has been engaged in therapeutic co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Creative and therapeutic fields intersected for Poh whilst working with people seeking asylum within a film project with director Gabrielle Brady, Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018). Poh is currently a freelancer creating crafted exercises and content to accompany people in their practices/projects/processes on Patreon alongside regularly tutoring, teaching and offering experiential workshops across therapeutic, creative and academic fields.

Natalie Poole is a Melbourne-based narrative therapist and 5Rhythms dance-movement teacher, supporting reshaping their life stories by integrating dance embodiment practices. In her approach, she combines a reauthoring worldview with movement-based work, guiding participants through an inquiry that fosters a deepening connection and experience of their bodies and emotions. Through dance-movement therapy and the 5Rhythms practice, she creates spaces for emotional expression and vitality, emphasizing the power of movement to access untold stories, foster personal growth, and re-weave people back into the community. Natalie has a background in school teaching, is a Clinical Supervisor (Dance-Movement Therapy Association of Australasia), and has begun her PhD in somatics and movement.

Shoshana Simons, (she/her/femme) PhD, RDT (Registered Drama Therapist) is a Professor and former Program Chair of CIIS’s MA in Counseling Psychology, Expressive Arts Concentration, and Interim Chair of the Community Mental Health Concentration where she teaches Family & Couple Dynamics, Multicultural Counseling & the Therapeutic Relationship & Narrative Expressive Arts Family Therapy, a voice actor and arts-based coach & consultant with Key of Life Academy. She is also adjunct faculty at the Northwest Creative & Expressive Arts Institute, Seattle, WA, where she offers a Certificate in NarrARTive Expressive Arts in Coaching. Shoshana has 35+ years of experience working in multicultural settings with children and adults in the fields of play, education, antiracism, counseling psychology, organizational development, and community work.

Originally from London, UK, Shoshana came to the USA in 1990 to complete a clinical traineeship at The Stone Center, Wellesley College, MA. She returned to the Stone Center in 1998 as Training Director for The Open Circle Program, training elementary school teachers to implement a ground-breaking SEL curriculum using a whole systems approach.

Shoshana has worked as a therapist in the UK and USA and has taught in the fields of counseling psychology and intercultural relations at Goddard College, VT, University of Vermont, and Lesley University, MA.

Shoshana’s interests include narrative and systemic expressive arts practices, indigenous healing traditions, Jewish mysticism and Jewish shamanic healing, the role of expressive arts in leadership, and arts-based research methods.

Shoshana holds a MA degree in Sociology & Social Policy from London Metropolitan University, a MA degree in Human Development, and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems from The Fielding Graduate Institute, CA. She graduated from the Omega Transpersonal Drama Therapy Program in Boston, MA and Wisdom of the Whole Coaching Academy.

Jon Tatelman is an adjunct faculty at Antioch Los Angeles and a licensed marriage and family therapist in California. He teaches Postmodern Approaches to Addiction Treatment, aiming to deconstruct the stigmas around drug use and help students understand how socioeconomic and political conditions tie into the complexities of addiction. He founded Scribble, a non-profit center in L.A. offering affordable individual, couples, group, and family sessions on a sliding scale.