INTERVIEW WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ARTS THERAPIST GARY NASH
Abstract
In this interview, British environmental arts therapist, Gary Nash, talks about the growing area of nature-based creative arts-therapy practice in the UK and environmental arts therapies initiatives that he and his colleagues have developed. He makes a special tribute to the memory of his colleague and the pioneer of environmental arts therapy, Ian Siddons Heginworth, who has sadly passed this year.
Key words: nature-based arts therapy, dramatherapy, environmental, nature, indigenous trees, ecopsychology
Brief note about the interviewee:
Gary Nash,
Dip AT, MAAT is a HCPC registered art therapist. Gary is a Co-founder of the London Art Therapy Centre in 2009, where he is a practitioner-researcher providing individual and group art psychotherapy and environmental arts therapy. He is a visiting lecturer at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education (IATE) and the University of Hertfordshire (UK) and co-editor of Environmental arts therapy: Wild frontiers of the heart, by Routledge, 2020.
Photo 1: Gary and Ian (2018). Images of Ian Siddons Heginworth.
Photo 2: Ian (2018).
Alexander Kopytin (A.K.): Thank you for taking up the invitation to contribute to the Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice journal. Since we began this conversation your friend, colleague and the pioneer of environmental arts therapy, Ian Siddons Heginworth, has sadly passed. You have agreed to continue this interview to honour his contribution to the field of creative arts and nature-based therapy.
You worked together with Ian in the field of nature-based arts therapies for some years, wrote a book, and participated in a series of environmental arts therapies initiatives. How did you find each other and what role did your collaboration play for developing nature-based arts therapies in the UK and elsewhere?
Gary Nash (G.N.): I met Ian after reading an article that he had written that made a connection between grieving and how Nature or natural spaces can hold us in our time of loss, pain, and suffering. I visited Ian at his NHS Wild Things Community Mental Health project based in Exeter in 2010. Following this visit I invited Ian to host a book launch event for his first book Environmental arts therapy and the Tree of Life: A monthly guide for your soul’s journey on this beautiful Earth (2008), at the London Art Therapy Centre, and that event led to seasonal visits to run one-day workshops in North London.
Ian wrote the self-published book Environmental arts therapy and the Tree of Life following several years researching the material with his wife, dramatherapist Marianne Siddons Heginworth. They ran a series of year-long creative-arts-nature therapy groups that become known as the Circle of Trees groups. This period of collaborative research and the groupwork experiences provided the material, themes, therapeutic approach, and creative facilitation methods that we heartfully described in the book. Themes that reflect the changing seasons and metaphors that directly resonate with reference to indigenous trees, are woven together with mythic narratives and the therapeutic interaction between Ian as writer, therapist, and storyteller.
The turning of the year and the qualities and metaphors associated with specific trees, provide a gentle unfolding as we read the pages and attune to the natural passage of time and step onto Ian’s pathway into Nature. It was the material described in this book that Ian was keen to develop into a one-year training course. Ian worked with me and Hephzibah Kaplan at the London Art Therapy Centre to plan the curriculum, locate the local parks we could work in, and liaise with the parks authority to arrange outdoor teaching spaces. The first course was launched in 2013 and moved to Devon in 2022 where it continues to offer a post-graduate training in environmental arts therapy for HCPC registered or graduating arts therapist practitioners.
The workshops and courses that we developed over this time have led to a growing community of environmental arts therapists and led to the group exhibition Touching Nature: Touched by Nature, in 2020, and the joint publication, Environmental arts therapy: Wild frontiers of the heart, which we co-edited in 2020. The book was released just as fear of the approaching pandemic began to take hold, and the exhibition took place between nation-wide lockdowns in the autumn of that year, here in London.
Since 2022 we have returned to Highgate wood to deliver the Introduction to Environmental Arts Therapy course and workshops for art therapy students. These achievements are gradual and take time and are driven by the need to understand the vital connections between Nature, psychotherapy, creativity, and the environmental climate emergency.
A.K.: The workshops and courses that you developed have led to a growing community of environmental arts therapists. Could you please say something about the training courses and some other fruits of your collaboration?
G.N.: When Ian and I first started running the one-year post-graduate programme in environmental arts therapy in 2013 we quickly realised that training at this level would limit access to an area of practice that was being rapidly developing in many related areas of health and education. During the seasonal one-day workshops we had been approached by counsellors, psychologists, social workers, film makers, artists, and forest school and forest bathing practitioners who were disappointed that they couldn’t go on to train and asked whether we could run a course that would introduce them to the principles of safe, therapeutic practice outdoors, underpinned by the vision described by Ian in the following way:
Environmental arts therapy is a new and unique creative arts therapy that does not fit into any of the existing modalities. This is because:
1. Environmental arts therapy is practiced outdoors and enjoys a profound and intimate relationship with the natural world, inspired and shaped by the locations that it inhabits.
2. The foundation of environmental arts therapy is its unique relationship with the turning year (the cycle of the seasons) and metaphors, myths and traditions relating to each month, so its therapeutic processes are imbedded in the natural passage of time.
3. Environmental arts therapy is multimedia, combining visual arts, drama, movement, voice-work and ritual, all practiced outdoors.
The idea to develop an introduction course came in response to this request from the many creative people who attended the seasonal workshops that Ian delivered from 2012-2019. The course was designed to provide a practical and theoretical framework to consider when taking your practice outdoors. The first Introduction course enabled me to design and deliver a London based course run over a 4-month period and to work with Vanessa Jones and Ian to deliver the programme. Since the 2020 pandemic my colleague Vanessa Jones and I have returned to Highgate Wood where the course is continuing to give access to this much needed way of working.
Photo 3: Gary and Vanessa Jones (2022).
A.K.: The book you co-edited describes the emergence of environmental arts therapy and its growth across the UK as supported through the training course based in London. Could you please, explain how you find that going along with the natural cycles and seasons and using an integrative arts approach are relevant for ecological or nature-based arts therapies?
G.N.: The book Environmental arts therapy: The wild frontiers of the heart (2020) was written in collaboration with the first and second cohorts of the one-year course. We set out to develop a book that would look at the practitioner experience and issues from very different perspectives and contexts. We also sought to deepen research in this area by drawing from the wider field of ecopsychology. One intention was to describe how the work has been developing and to value what the creative arts therapies bring to this way of working. Finally, we wished to clarify what ‘environmental arts therapy’ in particular, has to add to this growing area of clinical practice and its unique contribution to taking therapy out of doors. All contributing authors were invited to submit a chapter that showed the diverse ways in which arts therapists were applying this approach. The book describes how UK based art and drama therapists are adapting their practice when working in natural environments and providing ‘safe, structured and accompanied creative therapeutic healing experiences’ as described by Kopytin and Rugh [4]. The theoretical themes are developed along with illustrated examples of clinical practice across a variety of settings and locations.
This book represents the gentle and committed tending of an approach to working therapeutically in, with and through nature developed over several decades. Although the term is relatively new, environmental arts therapy draws deeply from an ancient history, a timeframe in which human experience has always sought expression through different art forms in relationship with the natural world. At the heart of this approach is an acknowledgement of the complexity of human psychology and a recognition of the ‘wildness’ found in human nature. Environmental arts therapy: The wild frontiers of the heart, is a book about the emergence of a new creative therapy modality in the British Isles.
Underpinning environmental arts therapy is the attention given to the natural cycles and seasonal changes. Behind the attunement to the changing seasons is an important reference to an older calendar that was used to mark the turning of the year, this is known as the Celtic Ogham calendar and is described in each chapter of Ian’s first book. Reference to indigenous trees and the qualities of one specific tree each month of the year, anchors the book and the training course within the seasonal transitions of the turning year, thus drawing our attention towards the cyclical nature of time. Attunement to the subtle changes within natural environments supports the therapist and client in the shift from ego-psychology to eco-psychology and a development of the ecological-self as described by Martin Jordan [3]. The cultural and symbolic qualities of each tree enhance the intersection between human and other-than-human ecologies and is seen as enhancing the experience of trainees, therapists, and clients when working in the outdoor studio.
A.K.: As far as nature-based arts therapies are concerned, what is particularly important for their understanding of therapeutic setting, the role of nature as therapeutic factor, the ways and goals of work and other aspects of therapy? Can you give some examples of how these ideas are developing in the UK?
G.N.: The current research that I am developing seeks to evaluate what happens within the inner frame of therapy and how we interact differently as we facilitate the active elements of the triangular relationship when working outdoors, particularly with individuals [5]. What is becoming apparent is that the experience of therapy outdoors affects the senses and energy being exerted by both participants. This sensory dynamic influences the therapeutic process, affecting the expression of feelings, thoughts, and the creative responses that might be inspired by the natural studio. As I describe in Nash [6]: ‘Another theme which emerges is how nature inspires us in multiple ways: sensory, emotionally, cognitively, and psychologically’ and that our senses may shape an expressive response that differ from studio work: ‘including a visual art response through sculpting, modelling, or land art, movement and drama expressed through the body and the use of voice, sound, and rhythm, allowing our experiences to be reflected back at us in nature’ (p. 41). These experiences influence the therapist’s facilitation skills and encourage a more body-aware and integrative approach when relocating the arts therapies outdoors, and are of interest to the emerging and developing theory base.
A.K.: It appears that nature-based arts therapies establish a new and vibrant field of practices in the UK in particular. What initiatives in this field you are now involved in and what activities will take place in near future?
Following the publication of the book in 2020 and the impact of covid-19 that same year, Ian’s desire was to develop a stronger connection with the wider environmental impact of climate change and its effect on our work as therapists. This is an area of development that the community of environmental arts therapists in the UK have been taking forward over the past two years. The publication of Jamie Bird’s book, Social action art therapy in a time of crisis, published in 2022 [1], has accelerated our understanding of the arts, creativity, and therapy in the context of a social and political dimension. Jamie’s work directly addresses the ecological frame that therapists’ work within and positions environmental arts therapy within a social, economic, and politically engaged framework [2].
During the last two years I have also made a new connection, through Shaun McNiff, with the principal editor of the Journal of Applied Arts and Health, Dr Ross Prior. The special issue and conference event that we hosted in 2023 bought together the ideas and work of Vanessa Jones, Jamie Bird, and others in the EatUK network, and positioned environmental arts therapy in relation to art-based research, and community arts therapy. Ross is now supporting me to edit a special issue, summer 2025, Volume 16(2) on creativity, the arts, and the environment, which will bring these themes together. A call for papers has just gone out and will be of interest to your community.
This special issue will invite a range of arts media, art-based methods, and approaches to working with individuals and groups when bringing nature in or taking therapy outdoors. Ian’s legacy will form a part of the editorial and Vanessa and I have written about EAT and the radical roots of art therapy. Jamie Bird and Pamela Whitaker will contribute and bring their approaches and influences to widen the theory base, and we also have an EAT trainee paper on working with a group in the NHS - so a strong beginning.
As well as these new developments, Ian always envisaged a gradual growth of the work as graduates from the one-year course took his ideas forward in their practice. He loved the idea of planting seeds and watching new Circles of Trees therapy groups take root and grow around the UK. I hope that the EatUK network and Newsletter will continue to support this growth and provide inspiration and connection as we gradually build a community of arts therapists who bring Nature into their studios and take art therapy out into the world.
A.K.: Thank you for sharing your memories and contribution to this growing area of nature based arts-therapy practice. Warm regards.
Interviewed by:
Kopytin, AlexanderDoctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Department of Psychology, St. Petersburg Academy of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education (St. Petersburg, Russia)
References
- Bird, G. (2022). Social action art therapy in a time of crisis. New York: Routledge.
- Bird, J., Bird, L. and Collard-Stokes, G. (2023). Social action art therapy and the enhancement of political imagination. Journal of Applied Arts & Health, Special issue: ‘Innovation in the arts in therapy’, 14(1): pp. 47–61.
- Jordan, M. (2012). Did Lacan ever go camping? Psychotherapy in search of an Ecological Self. In M.J. Rust, & N. Totton (Eds.) (pp.133-145). Karnac Books.
- Kopytin, A. & Rugh, M. (2017). Environmental expressive therapies: Nature assisted theory and practice. New York: Routledge.
- Nash, G. (2020a). Weaving the threads of theory and experience: a review of the literature, In Siddons Heginworth, I., Nash, G. (Eds.), Environmental arts therapy: Wild frontiers of the heart (pp.27-43). New York & Oxon: Routledge.
- Nash, G. (2020b). Taking art therapy outdoors: a circle of trees, In I.S. Heginworth, & G. Nash (Eds.), Environmental arts therapy: Wild frontiers of the heart (pp.137-150). New York & Oxon: Routledge.
Reference for citations
Kopytin, A. (2024). Interview with environmental arts therapist Gary Nash. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, Vol.6(1). - URL: http://en.ecopoiesis.ru