Jessica Ganton-Stanley, RCAT, RTC: BC, Canada

Jessica (she/her) has been working as an Art Therapist for over 15 years, and worked in community with non-profit organizations for over a decade. She is also a Clinical Supervisor supporting Art Therapists and professionals. Jessica has had the honour of bearing witness to the art and healing process of people of all genders, generations and experiences. She is a woman who walks with grief and understands creativity as a place for tending this ache. Jessica knows and respects the creative process and the wisdom, insight and potential for healing it holds. Jessica’s practice is respectfully informed by Response-Based Practice and she holds dignity, empathy and kindness at the centre of her work. Jessica believes that people are unique, clever, and creative at heart. She believes all emotions are valuable and deserve space to be tended and understood.

Jessica’s experience and areas of concentration is with adults in grief & loss (death of a loved one, illness, miscarriage, separation/divorce) and adults with respect to life transitions & personal growth. (Identity, sexuality, motherhood, birth, self-compassion, self-love, processing past significant experiences/responses).

The Art Therapy process can provide a way to express ourselves, a kind space for the ache of grief, how to care for that which we carry. Jessica’s model of therapy honours an uncovering and compassionate celebration of the truest, kindest self, and all parts of you.

The Supervision process can provide support and insightful skill building for Art Therapists and professionals. This is offered through experiential arts based practice, case consultation, resources and professional development conversations. These services can support the journey towards and after Registration as an Art Therapist. These services are offered one to one and in small groups.

Jessica offers online sessions and supports a small in-person practice in her studio. Jessica is a Registered Canadian Art Therapist with the Canadian Art Therapy Association and a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor with the Association of Cooperative Counselling Therapists of Canada.

Jessica lives and works in the traditional lands of the Snuneymuxw peoples in what is also called Nanaimo on Vancouver Island along the Salish Sea. It is her honour to live and work in these lands. She is grateful for her children, her kitties, for the loving people in her life, for her felt connection to the ocean, forest, plants and animals, and for the ever growing root of creativity that weaves through all that she has lived and what is to come.

Bren Balcombe: Aotearoa/New Zealand

Kia ora..! greetings from the land of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Island I reside is known by tangata whenua (people of the land) as “Te Ika a Māui” (the fish of Māui). This originates from the legend of Māui who pulled up the land on his fishing hook. English colonialists uninventively renamed this place the “North Island”. The tribal area we live in is called, “Te Matau a Māui” (the mouth of the fish) or Heretaunga (Here, ‘to tie’, taunga, ‘to come to rest’, i.e., the resting place of the canoe) and is the tribal lands of Ngāti Kahungunu. Despite these perfectly adequate place names Colonists re-named this area Hawkes Bay. The great geographical curve of Hawkes Bay is Māui fishing hook. The township we reside is Ahuriri (aka Napier). My ancestors settled in Aotearoa in 1871 and came from Norway, Scotland, and England. I am connected to this land by birth and whānau (family). I am cis-gendered hetero male in partnership with Kelly Forrest with whom together we have helped raise seven children.

My mahi (work) is counselling. I operate a private practice and have worked for many years in both Māori and Pākehā (non-Maori) led social services agencies as a counsellor and consultant. My beginnings in counselling originated from Vipassana meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka which I have studied and practiced since 1990. This interest in the mind/body experiential learning handed down from Siddhartha Gautama over 2500 years ago led to a desire to help others. Having traversed many personal difficulties in life, I felt this provided me with a richness of life experience and therefore in 1999, I began psychotherapy training. Initially, narrative therapy was influential to me and over time I have come to appreciate many ways of understanding. My tohu (qualification) is a Master’s degree in professional practice and my focus is Response-Based practice for counselling, EAP, and supervision. I am not a specialist in one area, but I do a lot of work in the area of sexualised violence, grief, oppression, and working with couples. Finally, I am director and co-founder of RBPAotearoa along with Donny Riki (Ngāpuhi & Ngāti Paoa) and my Hoa Rangatira (life partner) Kelly Forrest.

Kelly Forrest: Aotearoa/New Zealand

Ka nunui te mihi aroha ki ōu Atua, me ōu whenua, ā, ōu tupuna hoki. Ka korero ahau i tēnei mihi i te reo māori tuatahi nō tēnei whenua, kei mua te reo pākeha tuarua. Ko tēnei te mihi ki te wāhi o tōku kainga. I nga wā o mua i tae mai ōku tūpuna kei te noho rātou ki te whatumanawa o Kahurānaki, te wāhi whangāia o Heretāunga i te taha ō Tukituki. I tae mai rātou nō uropi kei runga i ngā waka City of Auckland rāua ko Westland, a, he Pākeha ahau. Ko Kelly Forrest toku ingoa. E tipu ana ahau i Heretāunga, ēngari, kei Ahuriri e noho ana inaianei.

I greet you this way to tell you that from under the eye of the mountain Kahurānaki in the East of the North Island of Aotearoa, and alongside the Tukituki river is the land where I was born and that I call home. My ancestors are from Poland, England, Germany, Scotland, and the Shetland Islands. Some of these ancestors were brought to Aotearoa by two ships called “Westland” and “The City of Auckland” finding their way to the Hawke Bay. My name is Kelly Forrest. With my husband and children, I now reside in Ahuriri/Napier in Aotearoa.

I am a registered Psychotherapist and Certified Hakomi Therapist (CHT) with a particular focus of partnership, as required by the principles of Tiriti O Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi. In my therapeutic approach I weave together knowledges from Hakomi therapy and Response Based Practice which draw collectively on principles of awareness, mindfulness, non-violence, and dignity. I have been strongly moved by my training in kaupapa Māori approaches, for both their strength, and holistic appropriateness for working within an Aotearoa context. Alongside my private practice I have also worked within agencies that have strong kaupapa Māori frameworks. All these frameworks lend themselves to gathering an understanding of how we are consistently responding to the world & others and how we make choices to live.

Dr. Tania Aguirre Solorio: Mexico

Tania has 13 years of experience working with individuals and couples. Her area of concentration includes working for individuals who have experienced violence in any form. She also works with couples and the diverse challenges couples experience at different moments in their relationship and interactions within the relationship and the broader context.

At the core of Tania´s practice is the acknowledgment of people’s preexisting abilities for safety and dignity. She focuses on bringing forward people’s everyday responses to dilemmas and oppression. Her work is very influenced by antiracist and anticolonial theories and practices from the Global South.

Tania is also interested in exploring with people their experiences and practices of sexuality from a Response Based Practice approach which upholds dignity, responses, and safety.

Her academic research centers on the exploration of the body and bodily experiences as intentional ethical responses for safety and dignity. She has a private practice in México where she was born, raised and where she currently lives. Tania has a Master’s Degree in family therapy, is certified in Response-Based Practice, and has a Doctoral Degree in Women and Gender Studies.

Donny Riki: Aotearoa/New Zealand

Donny Riki is a Māori healer of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Paoa descent, currently living in Levin New Zealand. Donny carries the insights and authority of “taonga tuku iho” (spiritual inter-generational intelligence) which informs her clinical practice as a psychotherapist. She has long standing relationships with whenua (land) and the natural world which spans across generations, and shares this relevance to trauma recovery and response-based practice. Donny continues the crusade for cultural redress, equity and social justice in Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is a fierce warrior, a pioneer, an artist and a kick arse grandmother.