Teach Inspire Create

How can teachers support wellbeing in creative education? With Art-psychotherapist, Sue Hamilton-White

• UAL Awarding Body • Season 1 • Episode 3

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To access the available transcript please use the following link: https://bit.ly/3oCRYzp

Sue Hamilton-White, an Art Psychotherapist, artist, MD and founder of a non-profit arts organisation, Untapped. Sue studied MA Art Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths College and is passionate about reducing youth suicide and self-harm through her work with Untapped and as an Art Psychotherapist for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) (NHS)

Sue’s dedication and unreserved commitment to using art as a tool for healing is a testament to the kind of person she is. 

We talk to Sue about the cross-section of arts and therapy, how Covid has affected young people, and how teachers can support wellbeing in creative teaching. 

Trigger warning: In this episode we will be covering the topic of mental health, including suicide and self-harm. If you or anyone you know is affected by these issues, please do check out the links in the show notes for more information and support in this area.

Discover more about UAL Awarding Body qualifications.

Matt Moseley:

Hello, and welcome to the Teach Inspire Create podcast. I'm your host, Matt Moseley, chief examiner for art and design at the UAL awarding body. In this series, I'll be talking to artists and creative industry leaders under the lenses of three main themes: teaching, inspiring and creating. My guest today is Sue Hamilton-White. So who is Sue? Sue is an art psychotherapist artist, MD and founder of a nonprofit arts organisation, Untapped. She studied an MA in art psychotherapy at Goldsmith college and is passionate about reducing youth suicide and self-harm through her work with Untapped and as an art psychotherapist for CAMHS, which is the child and adolescent mental health services for the NHS. Today, I'll be talking to Sue about the cross-section of arts and therapy, how COVID has affected young people and how teachers can support wellbeing in creative teaching. Now we do need to mention a trigger warning here. In this episode, we will be covering the topic of mental health, including suicide and self-harm. If you or anyone you know is affected by these issues, please do check out the links in the show notes for more information and support in this area.

Matt Moseley:

There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen.

VoiceOver:

Teach, teach, teach, teach, teach.

Matt Moseley:

Okay, Sue. Hi.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Hello.

Matt Moseley:

Thank you very much for joining us today. How are you?

Sue Hamilton-White:

I'm really good. Thank you very much.

Matt Moseley:

Good, good, good. So our first kind of questions are always around an inspirational teacher or an inspirational experience that maybe you had within your educational story, is there someone or something that stands out for you?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah, absolutely. When I was doing my masters in art psychotherapy at Goldsmiths, we had a special section in our training. It was all about establishing your identity as an artist, which is an interesting idea because everyone on the course at master's level, they've already done a degree in art. So you'd think these people know well who they are as artists. No, we all felt like we were babies starting a journey to becoming adults as artists. Now, most of us were over 30 on the course. You have to be at least 25, I think to study this course for various reasons, including you need a bit of life experience after your art degree, you need to be working in care for two years. So this guy was called Bruce Curry and he basically took us back to our earliest positive experience making art.

Sue Hamilton-White:

And it was wonderful to go back to that. And then part of the journey, this sort of growing up journey, this evolution towards understanding your identity as an artist was really to kind of also realise the trauma you might have experienced as an artist or trying to make art. And that is something that really sort of speaks to my experience working with people who come into an art therapy session and I can't make art, I can't draw, I can't ... you know, daunted completely by art materials. So it was really important to go back to play. Play as making art.

Matt Moseley:

It sounds like a very vulnerable experience to have to go through. I mean, do you mind me asking, what was your earliest memory of being creative?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah, absolutely, I did a drawing of it, so I remember it really clearly. It was being ... I think my mom was a teacher and she had to go for a meeting and I was dumped in an art room and I think I was about three or four and there was someone in there clearing up after an art session in a school. And she said, oh, look, just, just make some art, there's loads of art materials. You just get on, I'll keep an eye on you. I was like, oh my gosh. It was just like, yeah! So I just went a bit mad and had lots of fun. And she's like, oh yeah, keep doing that, do more, do more. And it's like two hours of absolute joy.

Matt Moseley:

Brilliant. Because there's a film I really like called The Beautiful Losers in which they talk about how there's that great period of your life, whereas a child, you are told to cut, stick, make, build, draw paint, and all these things are great, aren't they for your development for your self-expression. And then you reach that moment in time, don't you where suddenly those things are no longer important, are they, they're replaced with other subjects or topics? Did you experience that yourself in your education?

Sue Hamilton-White:

I, gosh, my dad was an architect. He would just let me play and make art with all his grown-up art materials. At school, I think I was just put off art at most turns, but as an adult kind of learning about creativity and education, I was really struck by the pedagogy of Reggio Emelia, which basically came out of postwar education in a little village in Italy called Reggio Emelia. And the adults got together and worked out how to educate these children. And every single subject was taught creatively, including maths, everything, and the child-led the learning journey. And it's an inspiring way of encouraging art to be explored. And our organisation has really got that at the heart. That, kind of, art is means to express yourself. Let's go on a journey. Let's not put up barriers.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah. And creativity is a vehicle, isn't it for communication. And there are some fantastic examples. There's a school in Plymouth where they nest all the subjects kind of together into creative arts activities, so they'll do history, but they'll make paintings and murals. And it feels a really natural way to learn and to engage young people with subjects that aren't necessarily creative. And so you mentioned that that kind of, part of the ethos of how you work, is that a vehicle that you are using then to break down some of these self conscious barriers that people have?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Definitely. I set up the organisation called Untapped in '95 and we were working mainly with young families with young children. And I think that was very much at the heart of what we were doing at the beginning. And it is still now. It makes sense to be playing with art, even for adults, even people at the end of their lives as well.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah. So how do people come to Untapped? How does it work? What's the story?

Sue Hamilton-White:

So we deliver art therapy to vulnerable young people, children, and young people in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area, at the moment. I work in schools for children with special needs. I will also work in the NHS and we have people that pay to come to us either online, which a new thing, doing art therapy online since the pandemic, or face to face. And also we deliver art therapy groups in the community to young people. So that could be via a youth centre, sort of targeted youth work. And our real thing at the moment is to use art therapy to reduce youth suicide and self-harm.

Matt Moseley:

Right. But that's, it's fantastic work. It's an amazing service that you're offering, obviously these young people who must be in a state of crisis by the time they arrive with you.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah. I mean the NHS are aware that I do work in an inpatients unit for young people. So they're like 12 to 17 and three quarters. They're coming in crisis. It's very difficult for young people to get the help they need when they need it. So we are in a process of trying to partner with NHS charities and also with our local council to become a service provider. So that hopefully soon in the next year, we'll be able to take some of the pressure off our local CAMHS, NHS. That's our plan.

Matt Moseley:

When your participants ... do you call them participants? What's what do you-

Sue Hamilton-White:

Clients, I guess.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah. Clients. So when your clients arrive with you and obviously as you say, they might be arriving having had some negative experiences at school, those ideas of I can't draw, I can't make, or I don't have those kind of ideas. How do you start to work with them? Particularly when they're already in quite a vulnerable state, how do you start the process with someone?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Okay, well, art therapists work in two kind of ways with this. We work directly or indirectly. So indirect work is you're faced with a big sheet of white paper and all the fear involved. And you can just get on with it, if you want to, that's a choice and directly is giving them a directive. For example, when I'm doing assessment early on in the process, I ask them to draw their ideal island and they make the decisions out everything that goes onto that island. And that tells me a lot about them, what they care about, who they want with them. How they want to live. For the first time, the idea of having a bit of control over what they're doing during the day or who they want to be around, et cetera, et cetera, is quite exciting. And also an inspiring way to start making art. And there is no need to be an artist. There is no need to be able to draw. There is no need to worry about the aesthetics of what you're putting on a piece of paper or what you're creating in clay or whatever. It's just a communication tool.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah. Do you have an ideal island?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Good question. And I've made many because I often work alongside the young person when I'm doing this to help them feel at ease. There's always Palm trees. There's always a beach. There's always my dog. There's always a horse. There's a nice wooden building that I can just sort of lie out in front of, under the sun. And there's some gardening to be done and no people,

Matt Moseley:

No people.

Sue Hamilton-White:

No people. Yeah.

Matt Moseley:

Oh, okay. What dog?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Small brown dog. He's actually the office dog. And if you follow us on Instagram, you'll probably see him, but he's very useful. For example, I've got a young person who's anxious and she met him and she was less anxious. And then she came into the art therapy room

Matt Moseley:

He's a therapy dog as well.

Sue Hamilton-White:

He's very helpful.

Matt Moseley:

He's an employee.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah. He a very useful volunteer. Absolutely. He gets some decent salmon now and again as payment. He's overcome some trauma himself. So he's a really important ... He's got lived experience.

Matt Moseley:

Great.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Definitely.

Matt Moseley:

So talking to our student group, the people studying art qualifications and they're thinking about careers that they would like to have within the creative industries, arts therapy is something which is becoming more and more in the conversation. So how do you go about becoming an arts therapist? Is there specific training you need to do?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Absolutely. You have to do an accredited training. That's registered with the Healthcare Professions Council or HCPC and they are rigorous in terms of monitoring your continuous professional development and making sure that your qualification you did in the first place is up to standard. That we are all accredited people. So the route, in order to apply, you need to have a degree in art or psychology. If you are a psychologist, you need to be practicing as an artist. You also have to have two years working in a care capacity. The actual master's degree itself, there aren't that many places in the UK to study. I think there's about five places. Three of them are in London. There's Roehampton, Goldsmiths, and there's one in east London. And then there's University of Hereford. There's one in Cardiff, and there's a few more that I can't remember, but there's not huge numbers of trainings available, unfortunately When you're doing the training, you need to be in psychotherapy the whole time.

Matt Moseley:

Okay. So you have to be practicing alongside the-

Sue Hamilton-White:

No, you can't practice until you're qualified.

Matt Moseley:

Right, sorry okay..

Sue Hamilton-White:

You have to be receiving psychotherapy.

Matt Moseley:

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Ideally, art therapy or you could do psychotherapy.

Matt Moseley:

I guess, then you're experiencing what you are going to be delivering. To have that grounding, you have to have had the journey yourself, I suppose.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah. You have to have dealt with your stuff.

Matt Moseley:

Right? Yeah.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Before you can go into a room and help someone else deal with their stuff.

Matt Moseley:

Of course. Yeah. It makes absolute sense. Yeah. But challenging, I suppose. And-

Sue Hamilton-White:

I can directly compare this to doing a masters in fine art, very different. Masters in fine art, just lovely. Good fun. Really great.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah. Art psychotherapy masters. Wow. You will be looking at every aspect of your relationships in your past, dealing with any trauma that you've experienced because if you haven't looked at your stuff and then you're in a room with someone they're bringing in things that they are really struggling with, which is obviously the work and you haven't dealt with your stuff, that's similar-

Matt Moseley:

It's going to trigger-

Sue Hamilton-White:

That's dangerous.

Matt Moseley:

Trigger you potentially, and your responses-

Sue Hamilton-White:

It's not safe.

Matt Moseley:

Right? Yeah. So

Sue Hamilton-White:

I just want to say a couple more things about the route into art therapy, if you don't mind.

Matt Moseley:

Please do.

Sue Hamilton-White:

So when I started at Goldsmiths and I think the same applies now it's a two-year full-time course or a three-year part-time course. The two-year full-time course, they go straight into, what's the word, when you're actually practising and you're being supervised heavily placement. Sorry. You do a placement in the first year and the second year. And you are in a room on your own with your clients, but you are supervised in the organization delivering the placement and the university and the same happens on the part-time course. So year two and year three, you'll be on placement.

Sue Hamilton-White:

It's a good idea to have those placements in the NHS, if you can because then you have an honorary arts psychotherapy placement. There is no need to be doing an honorary position once you've graduated nowadays because there is so much need for therapists. But I think it is useful to have experience working in a system with a multidisciplinary team. That's my experience, anyway. There is a new way of studying now, which is an advanced apprenticeship. And if you want to find out more information about that, I think you should go to a website run by BAAT, B-A-A-T. They're the British Association of Arts Psychotherapists. And you can find out more about the apprenticeship there, which is a really good route.

Matt Moseley:

So you obviously graduated from your masters. Did you work for another organisation first or did you start to build Untapped immediately?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Untapped evolved and we're evolving specifically to start delivering art therapy? So we became a community interest company in 2010, but I've been running it since 1995. And then in 2015, I started my training and I knew that we would be delivering ... I knew exactly what we'd be doing at the end. So I've always just wanted to work with young people because I think they need the most support and they get the least support simply put.

Matt Moseley:

So you mentioned that young people are getting the least amount of support. In what sense do you feel that there's a lack of support there for the young people?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Well, maybe it'd be good to sort of give you a few facts and figures.

Matt Moseley:

Yes, please.

Sue Hamilton-White:

50% percent of mental health problems are established by age 14 and 75% by age 24. And during the pandemic, another fact here, is that one study showed that 15% of autistic children have suicidal thoughts compared to 0.5% of typically developing children. And in the 86 days leading up to the first lockdown and up to the 56 days after, a quarter of people who died by suicide were autistic or had ADHD.

Sue Hamilton-White:

I know that those statistics talk about neurodiverse young people, but unfortunately the NHS and CAMHS, which is Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, they've been in crisis since before the pandemic. And to give you a bit of a wider picture, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, those governments fund counselling in all schools, not in England. I'm just talking about counselling. So the BACP or the British Association of Counselling Psychotherapists, they are campaigning to have counselling in English schools. Untapped, the organisation I founded and run we're campaigning to have art therapy in all education and schools in the UK, because we think that children who find it difficult to talk about their problems have a better kind of place to use art materials to express themselves.

Sue Hamilton-White:

We think that's a more effective way, or one effective way. I'm not saying art therapy cures everything, but for a lot of people, it is a really good way of overcoming their difficulties.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah. Cause I was going to ask you about the pandemic. Obviously it's something which we've all been going through and has had a massive impact on young people. You know, particularly from my perspective as someone working in education, I've seen it even in the operational process of education. It's had a huge impact. And so I wanted to understand a little more from you, it sounds as though it has increased the level of need in crisis for certain groups of young people, whether or not that is the case and, and what you think maybe some of the contributing factors to that might be.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Sure. I write a lot about this because I fundraise constantly to kind of try and mitigate these problems. So I think that young minds, in particular, the charity, they've stated that isolation and loneliness have been the biggest problems. And those are kind of terms that we can all understand we can all get with. But if you think about if you're an adult looking back over your kind of adolescence, it was natural to go out and grow up together in a social way. If you can't do that, you are really missing out on your social and emotional development. So if you were a vulnerable young person before the pandemic and you weren't having your mental health needs addressed then, or you weren't able to express yourself or get counseling or get therapy, whatever you needed then, it just got worse and worse and worse. You know, there are lengthy and I'm talking ... For example, if you wanted to get an ADHD assessment at the moment on the NHS, and you're a young person, it's an up to two years wait in many areas,

Matt Moseley:

Well, a lot can happen in two years while you're waiting.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Or autism. And if you are in your secondary school, that's really going to impact your education, it's going to impact your whole world.

Matt Moseley:

Yeah, and if you've only been alive for say for 14 years and you've been in a pandemic, it's a big percentage of your life, isn't it.

Sue Hamilton-White:

It's a tragedy. It's really a tragedy. And, I don't think I can stress enough how we need to be really standing up and acting for young people. And I'll sort of list all the problems that I think that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The impact of poverty has been widespread and people who are in poverty before that not kind of improved, really. Bereavement, if someone in your family dies from COVID, how do you, how are you going to get support for that? It's just not straightforward. You know, if you had special educational needs or disability trauma, if you're suffering neglect, domestic violence, that's another issue that.. Social workers have been really struggling to support families. So how, if you had social problems or family problems, those probably were exacerbated. But it's just, we are not looking after our young people.

Matt Moseley:

No, it's fundamental, isn't it? And we don't sort of stumble blindly into a crisis like this.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah.

Matt Moseley:

Before we kind of move on while we're still in the Teach element, I wondered if I could just ask you a little bit about setting up an organisation, because I know that a lot of our young listeners who are potentially thinking about this as a route or maybe any route to sustain themselves within the creative arts. and obviously as someone who's run an organisation for a really long time now and has seen it grow and change and evolve, how do you go about sustaining an organisation?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Basically if you wanted to set up a social enterprise or a community interest company, which are similar models, anywhere you live in the UK, there'll be a local voluntary services organisation who will help you do it. And they will train you for free to do lots of the aspects of it, which you won't have the skills yet to do. And they will talk to you about how you partner with organisations who will let you use rooms for free and let you have access to their clients and make beautiful work together because you're working together. And that's how we did it.

Sue Hamilton-White:

And that's worked so far so well. And if you're a social enterprise, you really want to be trading and that's how you're bringing your money in. You really want people to be paying you to do the work you do, which is a bit of a conflict there because you're delivering your work for free to the people who need your work. How do you trade? So you might, for example, if you're a community arts organisation, you might actually run art classes to people in nicer areas who just want to make art with their kids at the weekends, for example. Then they get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. They're contributing to the work that you're doing, that you're really passionate about as well. And that seems to work for a lot of people and that worked for us for a while, but we're now..

Matt Moseley:

There's sometimes a requirement to diversify a little from your core goal to therefore feed so that you're generating income So you're literally being ... You are generating support, an income to be able to then pour that back into your greater focus, your bigger goal.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Your social aim.

Matt Moseley:

Social aim. Thank you.

Sue Hamilton-White:

That's the word.

Matt Moseley:

I was reaching for the right definition there.

Sue Hamilton-White:

But then you're also building up a community around your work. And in this age of social media, it's good to be talking about what you're doing, celebrating it.

Matt Moseley:

But what I'm hearing, which sounds really encouraging is not to be put off by the forms, by the funding applications. If that's something that you are experiencing, it sounds as though there's support available.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Absolutely. Yeah. There is so much support and there's also an organisation called Knowhow Nonprofit or National Council of Voluntary Organisations. I could tell you more, but they are a really brilliant starting point and they will help you find your local volunteer organisation who will give you training for free. At the moment when the country's struggling financially, there is more funding and support available for grassroots voluntary organisations to set up, to support people on the ground. I found that in general over the years.

Matt Moseley:

Okay, brilliant. We are sort of segueing into the Inspire Section

VoiceOver:

Inspire, inspire, inspire, inspire.

Matt Moseley:

It sounds as though. Well, it clearly it's the work that you do obviously comes with an enormous sense of responsibility and a sense of unavoidable investment, emotional investment of yourself, into what you're doing. How do you go about looking after yourself and maintaining and sustaining a career as a therapist?

Sue Hamilton-White:

That's a really important question. So I think one of the most important things I learned on my latest placement when I was in NHS, working with adults and learning disabilities, my supervisor was a wonderful or guy called Kevin O'Farrell, who said to me one day, this was when the pandemic first kind of hit. He said to me, "Expect less of yourself at the moment. That's okay." I think he taught me so much about self-care. So self-care is something that is bandied about, but it is important. I use the words extreme self care. And I think if you can't look after yourself, there is absolutely no way you've got anything left to give to someone else. So the way I do it is I'm a runner. I run a lot. And when I run, I feel like my brain kind of untangles itself and anxiety kind of drifts away. All those neurotransmitters, feel-good chemicals that your brain makes when you move around a lot, it helps. I also make art. That's really, really fundamental. So I've made a hell of a lot of artwork over the pandemic, really deep diving into my artist's identity and having a lot of fun. And that's been really good.

Matt Moseley:

Right. Do you find that the art that you are making now as that changes and evolves, it informs what you do with your clients and in the workshops?

Sue Hamilton-White:

I don't think my work informs what I do with my clients, but maybe a little bit in terms of being free and playing and having the space to make art, which is a priority. In those terms, yes. I'm a multi-discipline artist. So I've got a film degree. I've worked as a music photographer for years and I paint now, next year I'll probably be, I don't know, working in glass or something. Not fussy.

Matt Moseley:

How do those transitions ... do they just happen through this stages? Is that something which happens intentionally to keep you stimulated or does it just happen through your inquisitive process? Do you just ...

Sue Hamilton-White:

I think it is a process. There's times when I'm influenced by maybe the resident. I did an artist residency a couple of years ago with a children's hospice and we were funded by the arts council. So I was making fused glass sculptures with them, but I was in residence. So I was making fused glass sculptures myself as well. And that really informed my practice. And I was making work about resilience, which obviously links to self care. And that was, I suppose, me processing and understanding the importance self-care, but I was making lots of artwork in order to kind of self reflect. Yeah, I guess so. So I made large ginkgo biloba leaves out of glass and the ginkgo biloba tree is something that is a prehistoric tree that survived many nuclear attacks in Japan, and so it's the great symbol of resilience. So transitioning between.. I just love playing with art materials, anything.

Matt Moseley:

Great. Well, because we talk a lot about the creative mindset. That's something that the UAL is trying to understand how we define that. And lots of the words that you are using in your practice about resilience and playfulness and inquisitiveness and self-expression and communication and collaboration. You know, these are all a set of ways of thinking that's transferable into all different spaces. Is part of the work that you do with your young clients about trying to build that type of mindset with them, or is it about introducing them to that mindset so that they can explore themselves?

Sue Hamilton-White:

I suppose it's about emotional freedom. When someone is making artwork, they're, they're releasing chemicals like dopamine into their body, which causes them to relax and be happier. And then I'll kind of talk to them, if they're ready, about what they need. That's a really big question, a difficult question for some people to answer, what do you need?

Matt Moseley:

That's massive.

Sue Hamilton-White:

It is difficult, especially if they're quite traumatised. It depends on where they are in their journey when that question can be introduced. But ideally, you're trying to get to that point because that will help inform them about who they are. And this is a process, a journey using art materials, using me to help them to get to the point where they really understand what they need and who they are. Who are you? You know, what's your identity and it's about fostering a sense of self. And once you get to that point, you know who you are and you know what you need, then you might need to learn, I don't know, how to play electric guitar and make a band. You might need to paint. You might need to ... you might have the courage to actually go and do that big thing that you've been scared to do for years, or you never thought you'd be able to do. And you start realizing that you have unlimited potential. And if you looked on our website, you'd see the first words you see on there is believe in your potential. So art therapy is all about kind of-

Matt Moseley:

Unlocking that.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Getting that to the point where you're are not scared to make, create, go, do all of those things, that you used to do when you were two or three, ideally

Matt Moseley:

That freedom.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Hopefully, it is freedom

Matt Moseley:

Free feeling. yeah. So just thinking about maybe some young people that might be listening to this podcast, and then maybe they've not reached quite a point where they feel they need help, but they might feel like they're on the way to that. Are there things that people can do for themselves at this moment in time?

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah. I think on a very basic level, it's doing things to look after yourself. And I think sometimes self-care can be an act of rebellion. That sounds dramatic, but if you've had awful things happen to you and you go and do something nice for yourself, that's quite empowering. So I'm talking about pretty much anything from making yourself a piece of toast, to going for a walk in a really amazing forest, to letting yourself write that poem, to getting some pencils out and doing a drawing. You don't have to show it to anyone, but if you want to that's another step. Those are the basic things.

Sue Hamilton-White:

But if you actually need to talk to somebody about really difficult stuff, there are a lot of apps available that can support you. And there are lots of mindfulness guided meditations that you can do on YouTube. There's a good website called The Mix, which is a great source of support for people to start their journey and getting help. Physical exercise is an amazing way of helping you. Don't be put off talking to your doctor and getting on a list to see somebody for psychological intervention.

Sue Hamilton-White:

As an organisation, we do offer art psychotherapy to anyone who can pay at the moment. Unfortunately, we will be offering it for free via the NHS and via youth centers in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, hopefully soon. If you do want to do art psychotherapy, don't hesitate to get in touch. We will try and support you, even if it's a discounted rate. But I think anything you can do to express yourself, getting the difficult stuff that's in, getting that out is really key.

Matt Moseley:

Well, I think that's great.

Sue Hamilton-White:

But if you're in crisis, you need to be talking to some Samaritans. You need to be going to A and E, in extreme cases, but do ask for help or ask someone to help you get help.

Matt Moseley:

And alongside that, teachers, I think are keen to support some more of this and in the conversations that we have at all levels, that maybe feel a lack of confidence or a lack of skillset to start. So are there any sort of techniques that you could offer to teachers about how to start to incorporate some of this type of work within the teaching that they're doing?

Sue Hamilton-White:

I think it's difficult to answer that question because teachers are often the people who are noticing these difficulties that young people have. And I think there is more support and funding available to kind of do mental health first aid training, so you can pick up signs. But I think in terms of creative activities, I think teaching subjects in a more creative way is really important. It's a challenging area. I've got to be honest because you risk opening a Pandora's box really. If you are employing an art therapy technique, for example, with a young person and you, if you can't kind of put them back into a sort of semblance of safety before they leave the room with you, you could easily be doing more harm than good.

Sue Hamilton-White:

So I think that I would say for teachers to really have a lot of focus on their own self care, try and teach their subjects more creatively, if possible, and also ask for training to kind of be aware how to support their students. So there's a sort of a system around you where you are noticing so and so, maybe they have scars on their arms, for example, what do you do then? I know there's safeguarding procedures in place in all educational establishments, but you need to feel safe in what you are doing, what you are offering, how you are teaching, et cetera, and any creative expression is useful, but without the kind of big, heavy questions.

Matt Moseley:

Right? Yeah. Well, I think that's wonderful advice. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's a responsibility, isn't it?

Sue Hamilton-White:

It's huge. Yeah.

Matt Moseley:

And, and so therefore to proceed with caution.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah.

Matt Moseley:

Brilliant. Thank you, Sue. That was wonderful. I think we'll just move on to the Create section.

VoiceOver:

Create, create, create, create.

Matt Moseley:

During this section of the podcast. What we like to do is to talk to our guests about our provocation, or a question or challenge or a task that they would like to communicate to our listenership. So is there anything that springs to mind to you for, for a provocation or a-

Sue Hamilton-White:

Yeah, this was a really challenging one, cause I had too many ideas for this.

Matt Moseley:

You don't have to limit to one.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Oh, okay. Really. Excellent.

Matt Moseley:

I'm happy to give you a couple.

Sue Hamilton-White:

There's two. They're related. first one is: What can you do to treasure the person in front of you today?

Matt Moseley:

Right.

Sue Hamilton-White:

And I think I'm just going to leave it there because I think that one's enough. What can you do to treasure the person in front of you?

Matt Moseley:

Wow. That's very powerful. Thank you. I'm thinking about that myself. I'll have to. Yeah. What a wonderful provocation. Thank you very much.

Sue Hamilton-White:

No problem.

Matt Moseley:

So, normally at this, at this point, we'll ask the guest, if there's anything that we haven't covered or anything that you wanted to kind of talk about.

Sue Hamilton-White:

I'd just like to finish on a quote.

Matt Moseley:

Please do. Yes, of course.

Sue Hamilton-White:

It's a quote by an American art therapist called Cathy Malchiodi. She says, "When words are not enough, we turn to images and symbols to tell our stories and in telling our stories through art, we find pathways to wellness, recovery, and transformation."

Matt Moseley:

Okay. Thank you.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Absolutely. Pleasure.

Matt Moseley:

I've got to do an official thank you, but before I do the official thank you, thank you ever so much. It was absolutely brilliant. There's so much just amazing stuff in there for people. What you've been talking about is wonderful. And it'd be incredibly reassuring to young people to hear that there are there's people like yourself and, and so many wonderful organisations out there who are open to being helpful and supportive and listening and caring and we just need to get more resources for you all really. There just needs to be more of you. If we can just clone you a few thousand times, we'd be in it.

Sue Hamilton-White:

Well, My plan for world domination is kind of, I'm setting it up.

Matt Moseley:

Thank you for listening to this week's Teach Inspire Create podcast with Sue Hamilton-White. I hope you've been able to take some valuable information from this episode and apply in one way or another to your creative practice. Join us next week when I'll be talking to Jamie Bedard one of the UK's leading disabled theatre practitioners. We'll be talking about the barriers and the opportunities for disabled people in the creative arts and how COVID has affected them. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to please do share your responses and feedback on social media, using the hashtag #ticpodcast. See you next time. Bye.