About Pia Jones

Pia is a UKCP registered integrative arts psychotherapist, workshop facilitator and author, drawing upon a range of creative and reflective tools to support her clients through their personal journeys. Pia builds upon 25 years of group work with a range of audiences, ages and cultures, weaving together arts psychotherapy with a previous background in advertising, qualitative/social research and creative facilitation.

Pia’s arts therapy practice is based at Studio 34, Bickerton House, Archway Studios, North London, where she works primarily with adults going through life and/or work transitions who wish to break away from self-defeating patterns and bring more authentic, creative expression into their lives. Alongside the arts, Pia draws upon myth and nature as intuitive ways to explore our deeper selves and relationships with others.

With a Masters and Diploma from the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education (IATE), a Diploma in Psychotherapy and Counselling from Regent’s University, Pia has previous clinical experience in hospitals, community centres and schools, including Place 2 Be, Kids Company, Homerton, Newham Hospital, Women + Health Centre in Camden. She is currently studying Environmental Arts Therapy, to explore more ways of bringing nature into arts therapy. Pia’s TEDx talk, The Heroine’s Journey, shows some of her thinking on art as a compass in times of transition.

Whereas Pia currently works as a therapist with adults, she writes for children. Her series of Therapeutic Fairy Tales for children and families going through troubling times, and the Storybook Manual on the therapeutic use of storybooks, were created in collaboration with artist and arts educator, Sarah Pimenta from Social Fabric. A new volume of Therapeutic Fairy Tales, also published by Speechmark, Routledge, is coming out in Spring 2023, looking at how nature can support children with feelings of anxiety, isolation and OCD. These will be accompanied by a new standalone book, Rewilding Children’s Imaginations, 99 Creative Activities Inspired by Nature and Folktales from Around the World, to support teachers and adults in helping children build a closer relationship with nature and storytelling.

Pia also designed Sometimes I Feel, a creative story-card resource to support children and adults in exploring and recognising a range of positive and challenging feelings.

Outside of the therapy context, Pia also designs and offers participatory-arts and creative-writing workshops for children and adults. She increasingly introduces elements of nature, myth and folklore into her workshops, to help children explore story-telling and art-making of the land.

In 2017, Pia worked alongside creative director, Eugene Hughes, and film director, Ben Mallaby, as story director on artgym’s award-winning documentary The Moving Theatre. The Moving Theatre follows four real-life migrant storytellers, and plays back life-changing moments of their journeys through the use of theatre and puppetry.

In March 2018, The Moving Theatre was voted best feature documentary at the National Film Awards.