I came to dramatherapy from personal experiences.

As a child, I experienced bereavement. I couldn't find the words, but I discovered that engaging with characters and stories gave me something I couldn't access any other way. Relating to another character's experience created just enough distance to begin exploring my own. That safe distance was what made it possible to process something I couldn't approach directly.

That insight has stayed with me throughout my career. When I later discovered dramatherapy as a discipline, it made immediate sense and I knew it was the work I wanted to do.

Since qualifying as an HCPC-registered Dramatherapist over 13 years ago, I have worked across mainstream schools, adoption support services, acute psychiatric settings, community mental health, and residential care with older people living with dementia. Across all of those settings, the same truth holds: when people are given a creative, safe space to engage with story and character, something shifts. Feelings that couldn't be reached directly become accessible. Experiences that had no words begin to find meaning.

I now run Blackford Creative Arts Therapy and Supervision, offering specialist dramatherapy and counselling for children and adults, evidence-based mental health triage and consultation for schools, and clinical supervision for qualified practitioners and trainees, bringing that same principle to everything I do.