This workshop focuses on providing practitioners with creative strategies to support anxious clients facing uncertainty. Using the themes of art, poetry, and seasonal reflection, participants will learn practical techniques to help clients reframe their anxious thoughts and find stability amid unpredictability. Through guided art exploration, reflective poetry exercises, and dynamic group discussions, practitioners will gain tools to foster resilience, encourage adaptability, and reduce anxiety in clients dealing with uncertainty. This session will help practitioners empower clients to confront uncertainty with a sense of calm and creativity.
In this monthly series of workshops, participants will learn creative approaches to help clients navigate anxiety that stems from uncertainty. Leveraging art, poetry, and seasonal themes, practitioners will gain fresh perspectives to support clients in embracing uncertainty and finding calm amid uncertainty. Each session draws inspiration from the changing seasons to provide tools for addressing anxiety and fostering growth in client practice. The perfect space for reflective practice, case exploration and peer support.
Session Outline:
1. Opening Reflection: Defining the supervision case and question through individual, guided reflection.
2. Art Exploration: Participants explore a selected piece of art in pairs or small groups, discussing what emerges with their supervision question in mind. Emphasis on noticing other participants’ perspectives.
3. Poetic Resonance: Reading the accompanying poem, followed by brief inquiries into words, phrases, and salient points that resonate.
4. Second Reflection: Re-reading the poem, focusing on the individual supervision question.
5. Creative Pairings: Breakout rooms for paired discussions on new, creative perspectives for the participant’s question.
6. Group Debrief: Collective reflection on insights gained.
Materials Provided:
Art and poetry pieces will reflect the month and season, selected from Gillian’s ‘Choir of Brave Voices’ publications. Participants will receive these materials in PDF form, along with reflective practice prompts and background information to support both
personal and client reflection.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- Apply creative and reflective approaches to help clients manage anxiety related to uncertainty.
- Use artistic and poetic prompts to explore clients’ responses to unpredictable situations.
- Develop new strategies to foster resilience and adaptability in clients facing the unknown.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Therapists, counsellors, coaches, supervisors, and other professionals interested in enhancing their reflective practice through creative approaches.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- Integrating creative reflection techniques into client work helps professionals address anxiety related to uncertainty, providing fresh approaches to help clients find stability in unpredictable times. This workshop will empower participants to use creativity as a tool to enhance their clients’ resilience and adaptability, fostering more
dynamic and effective professional relationships.
Course Content
Presenter
Gillian offers a safe space that’s held lightly. There’s room to explore with playful curiosity or serious conversation; whatever’s called for.
Gillian is a master coach, supervisor, mentor, artist, owner of Inside-Out Coaching and author of 7 Choir of Brave Voices books and creative reflection resources. Accredited by the ICF, EMCC, EASC and CSA, her client work stems from creative, narrative and somatic coaching and supervision methodologies with a specialisation in working creatively and supporting clients’ reflective practice. British born, she now lives and works in Switzerland with her family and Schnauzer.
Gillian works with creativity and metaphor to build safe and abundant space for working and thinking from new perspectives.
Shirley Smith is passionate about the potential of working with creative methodologies in supervision. She has been actively involved in enabling the ongoing development of leaders as a vehicle in support of wider culture and systemic change.
Shirley works mainly in multi-cultural environments around the globe from her current base in Vienna, Austria. She mainly provides supervision to individuals and small groups who are keen to access supervision as part of their own ongoing professional development and self-care. They also want to develop their own practice in working more ‘creatively’. She has been experimenting more recently with ways of making creative supervision accessible online and also with and without video. A kind of learning laboratory.
