Expressive Arts Therapy > Faculty
Heather Dawson
Founding Director Expressive Arts Therapy Program
Instructor
CAGS, MA, RCC-ACS, RCAT
Heather Dawson (she/her) lives and works on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples on the Canadian Westcoast. She is the Founding Director of the Expressive Arts program in Vancouver and a senior faculty member at the European Graduate School in Switzerland.
Heather is a former faculty at the Vancouver Art Therapy Institute and a former adjunct faculty, St. Stephens College at the University of Alberta. She has taught and presented workshops internationally.
Her formal training in the arts, contemplative practices and psychology led to the study of art therapy, expressive arts therapy, and the mindfulness-based practice of the Hakomi Method. The integration and threads of connection between these pathways is an enduring place of discovery and inquiry in her work.
As a “long life” practitioner Heather has applied her interest in personal and social transformation to teaching and working alongside individuals and communities using intermodal arts. She supported the introduction of Expressive Arts into communities in the Canadian Arctic and continues to supervise practitioners locally and internationally in intermodal practice.
Heather works with the basic principles of presence, connection, a resource-oriented perspective, and the primacy of curiosity and wonder in creative exploration. She maintains a studio practice as a visual artist where the opportunity for taking pleasure in the interplay between messiness, stillness and not knowing provides a basis for self-care.