“Pia takes great care creating an atmosphere that is open, welcoming, and creative. She guides you to real insights with compassion and a gentle touch.” 

With 30 years’ experience in using the creative arts for personal and professional growth, I am an integrative arts psychotherapist (UKCP accredited), workshop leader, published author and TEDx speaker. While I work with adults in 1-1 therapy, I write books for practitioners and children, and run creative workshops for women, schools and organisations. I am passionate about empowering people to reconnect to their innate creativity to realise their own unique potentials.

Jungian, humanistic, transpersonal, existential, psychodynamic and attachment theories inspire my work, as well as myth, film, nature and art. Despite the challenging times we live in, I continue to believe in the human spirit’s capacity to renew itself through adversity and loss, and in the power of our natural creativity to enable more fulfilling connections with self, others and the habitats we live in.

With a mix of British and European roots, having lived and studied across three continents, I have a deep interest in different cultures. My belief is that the arts offer us a universal, archetypal language, to help explore our relationship to home, displacement, and the places we live and move between.

My TEDx talk (2012) shares how the arts and creative, projective tools can help connect us to our inner compass as guide in times of transition.

Conferences where I have taught/facilitated creative learning sessions.

Biography: studies and work from 1990-to-date

• 1990-1994 – BA in modern languages (French, Spanish) with thesis on Quichua/Castilian bilingualism in Ecuador published in Early Years journal
• 1994 – Graduate trainee at Leo Burnett advertising agency, London
• 1995 – Introduction to transpersonal and creative therapies at WYSE International‘s leadership programmes in the UK, Italy and India.
• 1997 – Move into qualitative research and creative group facilitation
• 1997-1999 – short courses at Sesame, Central School Speech & Drama; Making Moves – Jungian drama/dance therapy
• 1999 – Certificate in Psychotherapy & Counselling from Regent’s University
• 1999-2000 – Trained as Place 2 Be child counsellor in primary schools.
• 2001 – Volunteer at Atlantic Whale Foundation in Tenerife, helping co-design community arts & educational projects on boats for locals & tourists
• 2001, embarked on Certificate and Masters in integrative arts psychotherapy at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education
• While training, I co-founded The Dream Mill, a qualitative research agency working with Action Aid, Samaritans, Department of Health/Education
• 2005, my illustrated ‘Sometimes I Feel’ cards published by Speechmark
• In 2000s, honorary therapist at Camden’s Women+Health Centre, Homerton hospital, and Newham hospital’s Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss clinic
• 2013 – helped launch counselling and body therapy pilot to support new mothers – Women+Health centre, Camden
• 2014-2020 – Arts psychotherapist at The London Art Therapy Centre, offering 1-1 therapy, workshops; part of hosting team for Professor Hogan’s ‘Birth Project’ event, & Shaun McNiff symposium on ‘How Art Heals’
• In 2017, Story Director for artgym’s award winning documentary, The Moving Theatre, using puppetry & live interviews to tell life-changing stories of migration, voted best documentary at 2018 National Film Awards.
• 2020, co-founded Studio 34, an independent arts therapy studio
• 2020, 2023, Speechmark pubished my therapeutic fairy tales, illustrated by Sarah Pimenta, The Storybook, & Rewilding Children’s Imaginations manuals
• In 2023 – Introduction to Environmental Arts Therapy training
• From September 2026 – created Croftdown Arts Psychotherapy studio in Highgate Newtown Community Centre

Professional memberships and group networks