Looking for a pathway to your wellbeing?

Utilising creative therapies and wellbeing tools, to reflect, find insight & inspire positive changes.

A collaborative approach that builds trust and supports you to harness your own strengths and identify your core values.

WHAT IS ARTS THERAPY?

Arts Therapy is an evidence-based psychotherapy that utilises all creative modalities, including sound, movement and drama, to improve one’s emotional state or mental well-being. Integrating several therapeutic models, Arts Therapy is a powerful non-verbal creative tool that can offer the outlet to explore untapped and hard to express emotions and challenges through colour, shape and sound. Arts therapy does not require participants to have any art skills.

Art therapy helps children, adolescents, and adults.

• Explore their emotions • Relieve stress • Improve symptoms of anxiety and depression
  
• Cope with a physical illness or disability
  
• Develop self-esteem and self-awareness
  
• Cultivate emotional resilience and regulation skills
  
• Promote insight and new solutions to challenges
  
• Reduce and resolve conflicts and distress
  
• Manage addictions and help develop new strategies and approaches.
  
• Express and release trauma
• May utilise mindfulness and relaxation tools to develop self-soothing skills and build resilience.
  

About Me

My name is Isy (She/Her) and I am a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ Community. I am a registered Arts Therapist and professional member of ANZACATA (AThR) and have been a practicing art therapist since 2014. I have completeted study at the Ikon Institute (Adelaide) and at MIECAT-Masters (Melbourne) in 2020. I also provide clinical supervision since completing a PACFA approved advanced certificate of supervision training.

I’ve had the privilege to support a broad range of clients since 2014 with a keen interest in working with youth, disability and children with high, complex needs in Foster care whilst also developing programs for Adults with chronic mental health challenges. My practice is inspired by nature and incorporates walking, mindfulness and art making in tranquil settings.

I have worked within corporate and hospital settings, NGO's, schools and within peoples homes. My approach is flexible and I will work with my clients needs and goals to create a unique, tailor-made session plan.

My client-centred art therapy sessions are open to any form of creative expression including movement and music. I encourage my clients to break free from the traditional approach and technique that might be associated with any given modality or medium, anything goes!

Services

1:1 Arts Therapy

1

Clinical Supervision

Wellbeing

Group/Team

4

WHAT DOES A 1:1 ARTS THERAPY SESSION LOOK LIKE?

Ideally the space utilised for an Arts Therapy session is quiet, confidential, has access to water and is a relaxing space to make art. Unlike art classes, Arts Therapy is therapy and therefore can be intimate, vulnerable and requires privacy. Having said this, Arts Therapy can absolutely be fun, energetic, loud and messy as well.

As an Arts Therapist I encourage and invite participants to explore materials and modalities with an open mind and try to navigate around preconceived ideas of how to use any materials, as though experiencing them for the first time. Freedom is given to break the rules that have been taught to us in art classes, remembering that no arts skills are required and that I am not an art teacher.

Art materials and creative modalities are used as a way to express, release, voice and come to know more about aspects of ourselves, our relationships and how we perceive our world around us. Time is taken to create a safe and supportive therapeutic relationship that nurtures the individuals needs and goals with gentle encouragement and guidance along the way. We can work together towards therapeutic & NDIS goals as well as exploring creative interests for self-empowerment, confidence and resilience building. We can explore a participant’s sensory profile and form strategies for emotional regulation whilst building emotional literacy.

what to expect in clinical supervision

I use evidence-based supervision frameworks to scaffold the supervisory sessions, I will offer creative modalities including visual arts, sound and movement, for professional reflection and development. I utilise integrative development and seven-eyed models to inform my supervision sessions.

Together we navigate the queries you bring in a non-judgemental space to reflect, be present and gain insight whilst being offered guidance and empathy.

I base my practice on a humanistic and transpersonal approach that looks for creative possibilities that address deeper meaning, core values and past and present relationships to others. This approach also sees perceived crises, such as burnout, as opportunities for learning and growth.

The supervisory style I offer encourages a collaborative process that also places importance on personal responsibility and encourages you to develop time and space to prepare for your sessions, as the more you bring to the sessions the more you will gain and grow from them.

MY RATES

News & media

Highway to the sky

February 2023

It was such a privilege to facilitate the creative exploration for three participants to share their experience of travel, technology and transport from a neurodivergent perspective. Thank you Carousel media, Monash University Emerging Technologies Research Lab and ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making & Society for this collaborative opportunity.

Contact Me

Isy Ashford

Kaurna Country

Unley based (within 10km radius)

South Australia

0416 202 278

arttowellbeing@gmail.com

The Art to Wellbeing would like to acknowledge the Kaurna peoples deep connection to land, waters and sky and offer my respect to their Elders, rich with knowledge and wisdom. Kaurna Sovereignitywas never ceded and the loss of culture, language, connection to land and sacred sites, leaves a trail of deep sorrow. It is this sorrow and a strong value of facilitating healing that paves my life path and underpins my practice.

Always was, Always will Be.