MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes

Fiona Hamilton specialises in creative, expressive and reflective writing and devising projects with creative and therapeutic aims. She is a mentor and has extensive group and one-to-one experience of facilitating in the NHS and complementary healthcare, with community groups devising projects to raise awareness and challenge stigma, with young people in schools, and on experimental poetry and drama projects. She is Arts Lead for the National Centre for Integrative Medicine and at the University of Bristol teaches students who wish to complement clinical studies by exploring concepts of health and their own lives using poetry, movement, humour, conversation and reflective writing. Fiona has published drama scripts, poetry collections, radio pieces, and public art, and a play for live online audiences during the pandemic exploring the power of music and dance for healing. Particularly relevant to her CWTP role are published work for the book ‘Medicine, Health, and the Arts’, ‘Words and Thresholds’ in Scriptum Creative Writing Journal, and the books ‘Writing Routes’ and ‘Writing Works’.

Dr John Hills, MA, PhD, MBACP (Accred), SFHEA is a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) accredited psychotherapist, a member of the national Pluralistic Practice steering group and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. John trained in integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Leeds where he took his PhD, and went on to become a senior lecturer, course leader and course director at Leeds Beckett University. John's PhD centred upon the meaning and patterns of therapeutic change as modelled between therapist and client.   John has been in practice since 2011 and has worked in a variety of settings including prison counselling, cancer and hospice care, and student counselling. John practises privately from West Yorkshire.  As a practitioner he has a particular interest in pluralistic, systemic, and existential approaches to counselling and psychotherapy. As a researcher he is particularly interested in change in psychotherapy, systemic reframing of psychotherapy change principles, and the social contexts in which psychotherapy takes place, including the social determinants of mental health. John is also a practitioner-researcher of psychological therapies. In addition to training work, John has four PhD students and has organised several research conferences, including serving as local host for the Society for Psychotherapy Research's UK conference in 2022.  John’s membership of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, saw him contribute the SPR’s response to the NICE Guideline on Treatment for Depression which was published in 2022 following changes recommended by the SPR as part of a coalition of organisations including the BACP, UKCP, BPS, Mind and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, expressing scientific concerns about the creation of the guideline. Before joining the Metanoia Institute, John facilitated the launch of an Integrative Counselling professional training program at Leeds Beckett University and an equivalent course delivered at a partner college in Singapore, including facilitation of teaching and student exchanges. John is an advocate for the role of higher education in advancing social mobility, in particular in pathways for students from non-traditional backgrounds, and at Leeds Beckett took a lead role in the creation and maintenance of scholarships for both clinical training and PhD study.   John is now Metanoia’s Institute’s lead for Access and Participation. As defined by the Office for Students (OfS) Access and Participation Plans set out how Higher Education providers will improve equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access, succeed in, and progress from Higher Education.

Graham has lived mostly in Wales for the last thirty years, where he works as a writer-in-residence at HMP Parc, Bridgend. In 2013 he was the first writer-in-residence at Swansea University College of Medicine and, with Victoria Field, ran a popular course, Writing in Health and Social Care, for nine years at Ty Newydd, the Writers’ Centre for Wales. He worked for many years for the Ledbury Poetry Festival, as an outreach writer with elderly people and has facilitated widely in the fields of dementia and mental health. A founder member of Lapidus, Graham has contributed to seminal collections and conferences in the field, most recently at The Creative Bridges conference (CWTP/Lapidus) in Bristol and as a keynote speaker at the Breathing Space conference in Snowdonia. He has twice been a visiting lecturer at the University of Utah. Publications and Professional Activities; Versions of Events: Lies, Judgments and Poems in Poetry Wales (2017). In This Together – Writing in Health and Social Care (with Victoria Field) in: Expressive Writing in Counselling and Healthcare (Thompson and Adams, eds, Rowman and Littlefield, Sept 2015) Crossing Disciplines with Ethnographic Poetic Representation (with Professor Frances Rapport, University of Swansea) in: Poetic Inquiry Vol 5 no. 2 (2012) Men Inside: tales from the prison: Junction Box. 3rd edition.- Llangatock. Lyndon Davies: http://www.lyndondavies.co.uk/w/category/junction-box/ Hartill, G. (2011). Where Do We Come From And What Do We Bring – As Writers? Lapidus Journal. 3 (3). Available from: http://lapidusjournal.org/ Recent Collections: Seven Masters of the Jian’an Era. Commercial Press, Beijing, (2018) Selected Poems of The Three Caos (translations, with Professor Wu Fu Sheng) Commercial Press, Beijing (2017) Chroma, Hafan, Swansea, (2012)

Dr. Poonam Madar is a sociologist, writer, and therapeutic and reflective writing practitioner with an extensive background in research, visual culture, and the sociology of emotions. She is a Tutor on the MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes at the Metanoia Institute. Poonam’s interests and expertise centre on the use of arts practices to explore themes of identity, culture, difference, and belonging. Her recent publications include a chapter in Black Music in Britain in the 21st Century and a prose piece on the human condition in Lapidus Magazine. She is also the co-author of a study examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals living in London. Her current work explores the field of Creative Health, particularly in educational and healthcare settings. In May 2024, Poonam curated, created, and led THE WRITE TRAIL—a month-long literary festival in the London Borough of Ealing that embraced all seven towns within the borough. The festival was generously funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Communication and Creativity at City St George’s, University of London, and serves on the editorial board of The Lapidus International Research and Innovation Community (LIRIC) journal.

Ansuman Biswas is a practising artist and BACP registered Integrative Counsellor and Coach. His diverse inter-disciplinary creative practice has a strong poetry and performance component. He is a therapist with the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine and focuses on Humanistic Therapy and creativity. He is Lecturer in Live Art and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London and previously taught at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at Dartington College of Arts. Ansuman says: ‘My pedagogy is informed by my work as an artist and therapist. I am interested in the nature of consciousness and the plasticity of the nervous system so teaching and learning is at the core of my practice. In a Higher Education context I attend to the process of learning as much as to specific facts or techniques’.