The importance of psychological flow in a creative, embodied and enactive psychological therapy approach (Arts for the Blues)

Abstract Psychological flow can be experienced in various occupational, recreational and creative domains and may confer increased well-being. Yet, very few studies have examined flow as a potential feature of creative arts therapies – particularly therapies which prioritise embodied/enactive processes. This study tested the acute effects of a 90-minute workshop (Arts for the Blues; A4B) on participants’ (N = 18) mood and personal goal attainment. Psychological flow was measured, and participants rated the importance of flow in relation to A4B’s psychotherapeutic aims. Results show significantly improved mood, increased goal attainment and substantial flow scores, suggesting that A4B processes may invoke flow. Participants’ importance ratings of different flow dimensions indicate that some were considered as more important than others. Results are discussed in relation to methodological limitations, helpful creative therapeutic factors that may enable flow, and implications for researchers and practitioners who wish to encourage flow in their practice.


Psychological flow
This study begins to evaluate the potential relevance of psychological flow to creative arts therapy experiences and outcomes, especially those that could be described as embodied/enactive (Koch & Fischman, 2011), that is, involving somatic awareness and bodily expression. The construct of psychological flow describes a phenomenological sense of being fully engaged in a challenging/effortful yet enjoyable/intrinsically rewarding activity, commonly referred to as being 'in the zone' (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) featuring high concentration, self-determination, creativity and low self-consciousness (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014;Ull en et al., 2012). Established by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), current conceptualisations of flow include nine dimensions listed below (Jackman et al., 2016), with the first three dimensions supposedly describing conditions that give rise to the remaining six experiential characteristics: Challenge-skill balance: Perceived equivalence of the activity's demands and the skills one possesses The playful, immersive and intrinsically rewarding nature of creativitythat is, the potential to create original and innovative items or ideas which are also of some value or utility (Runco & Jaeger, 2012)overlaps with reported experiences of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Yet, experiences may differ across different domains, depending on the aims and context of the activity. Flow has been described extensively in the domains of athletic performance (e.g. Jackman et al., 2016;Swann, 2016) and in the arts (Doyle, 2017). Concentration and automaticity have been reported in non-performative art-making (Chemi, 2016;Taylor, 2016) and, during sporting performance, these two dimensions present in addition to Sense of control and Autotelic experience, more than the other five dimensions (Jackson, 1996). Whereas, in music performance, Sinnamon et al. (2012) reported the top three as Autotelic experience, Clear goals, and Unambiguous feedback. Recent research comparing musicians and athletes has found Transformation of time and Autotelic experience higher in musicians, while Clear goals and Unambiguous feedback were higher in athletes (Habe et al., 2019). Hence, differences in flow dimensions within different activities/domains are still being debated.
Factors enabling flow Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi (2014) state that activities must feature clear proximal goals, just-manageable levels of challenge, and provide some form of immediate feedback in order to capture one's attention to enter flow state. However, in artmaking, Clear goals, Sense of control, and Unambiguous feedback are not typical of individuals' flow experience, with artists often being surprised by what emerges (Doyle, 2017). Despite this, it is generally agreed that a good fit between the nature or difficulty of the activity and the interests, skills or personality of the individual is conducive to flow (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).
Environments which enhance this balance between individual and activity, or involve any of the other flow dimensions, can encourage flow. Games, hobbies and leisure pursuits are prototypic flow activities (Perkins & Nakamura, 2013), with unambiguous feedback and clear goals available in most games, sports and in many artistic or religious performances. Group interaction has been found to generate collective flow states in artistic performances (Harmat et al., 2021). Other studies link flow's 'emotional contagion' to collaboration in artistic (e.g. Sawyer, 2017) and spiritual (Rufi et al., 2016) activities. Also, it has been argued that mindfulness body scans can increase the likelihood of flow (Aherne et al., 2011). In sporting contexts, Swann (2016) and Jackman et al. (2016) differentiate between external (e.g. environmental conditions, team play and interaction) and internal (e.g. preparation, emotion, locus of control, goal orientation, and optimism) flow-facilitating factors. The latter three, i.e. locus of control, goal orientation, and optimism, are referred to as linked with mental toughness, therefore personality may play a role (Ull en et al., 2012). Therefore, individual, social, environmental and task-related factors influence subjective flow.

Flow and well-being
Surprising insights and rapid meaning-making occur during flow (Doyle, 2017). Over time, engaging in flow-promoting activities may predict psychological wellbeing (Tse et al., 2021), even during the COVID-19 pandemic (Habe et al., 2021). Douse (2017) conceptualised flow in dance improvisation as 'eudemonic well-being' emanating from personal expressiveness, self-realisation, excellence, and relatedness. Rogatko (2009) reported that an hour of self-selected flow-inducing activities for one hour provides significant increases in positive affect. All flow dimensions (except Automaticity) were found to contribute significantly to the affective change. Therefore, flow may contribute to psychological benefits in activities designed to enhance well-being or enjoyment.

Flow within creative arts therapies
Despite the above evidence and flow's theoretical and empirical links to insight, creativity and embodied phenomena, few studies have examined flow as a potential determinant of mood change in relation to creative arts therapies. Creative arts therapies (CATs) is an umbrella term for regulated professions that use various forms of art makingincluding but not limited to Art Therapy, Music Therapy, Dramatherapy and Dance Movement Psychotherapyto enhance social, emotional and psychological well-being, such as improving mood, developing skills or working towards meaningful change (Shafir et al., 2020).
Flow predicted the meaningfulness of song creation during a Music Therapist-facilitated song-writing session with university students and retirees (Baker & MacDonald, 2013), and flow predicted hope and readiness to change in a song-writing intervention for adults receiving acute inpatient care (Silverman et al., 2016). Silverman and Baker (2018) propose flow to be an active mechanism in Music Therapyin passive (i.e. listening) but especially active (e.g. song writing) interventions. However, we know that flow is more accessible through physical activities than mental activities (Ross & MacIntyre, 2020). Since many CATs employ physically mediated activities, such as painting or movement, they may be more flow-inducing than talking therapies. Mehta's (2018) theoretical link between Flow and Dance/ Movement Therapy has been supported by Parsons and Dubrow-Marshall (2019) who reported that rapid visual and embodied insight and meaningmaking were therapeutically salient in Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP). More evidence of flow-like phenomena comes from Taylor (2016) and Warren (2006) whose autoethnographic, observational or theoretical accounts of their own flow-like experiences in Art Therapy highlight the dimensions of Concentration and Automaticity. Further investigation of flow as a potential mechanism in more embodied and enactive CAT experiences is therefore warranted.
Recently, moderately high levels of flow were measured during a multimodal CAT (i.e. working with multiple artistic mediums) intervention called Arts for the Blues (A4B), with participants also describing some of the barriers and enablers to flow . Stemming from research in DMP, and further developed using evidence from 76 research studies reporting psychological interventions for depression, A4B is a physicallyengaging and pluralistic CAT. A typical A4B pilot workshop is described elsewhere (Haslam et al., 2019;Karkou et al., 2022;Omylinska-Thurston et al., 2021;Parsons et al., 2020; and in the Appendix, and has been trialled in clinical (such as NHS Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies services), non-clinical and professional (such as in Higher Education/helping professions) populations. Preliminary results (e.g. Haslam et al., 2019;Karkou et al., 2022;Parsons et al., 2021) suggest that it both improves mood and progress towards personal goals within the session. Based on these studies and the aforementioned flow-in-CATs research, A4B is theorised to encourage participants' flow due to certain conducive features, presented in Table 1.
One pilot study of the approach  highlighted the importance of Loss of self-consciousness, Challenge-skill balance, Clear goals, Unambiguous Feedback, Intense concentration, and Automaticity in order to bring about Autotelic experiencethe intervention's intention being to positively affect participants' acute mood state. Based on the cautious yet Clients are encouraged to develop interests and enjoyment outside of sessions as well as in-sessionproviding Autotelic experiences by increasing activities that may be conducive to flow such as hobbies (Perkins & Nakamura, 2013).

Connecting body and mind
Clients engage in mindful body scans, encouraging Concentration and flow (Aherne et al., 2011).

Structured improvisation
Clients experiment with creating while 'switched off' from intentional, cognitive control of the artistic medium, thus encouraging Automaticity (Doyle, 2017).
growing theoretical and empirical evidence for flow as a salient feature in embodied/enactive activities and CATs, the current study was intended to further test this.

Aims and hypotheses
This study aimed to quantitatively measure (i) pre-post changes in mood and personal goal attainment; (ii) the level of flow experienced during an A4B workshop, and which dimensions are experienced most; (iii) participants' ratings of the importance of flow and its individual dimensions in an A4B workshop.
In relation to the first aim, three hypotheses were tested, based on the extant theory and evidence: H1. Participants will have significantly increased positive affect post-workshop; H2. Participants will have significantly decreased negative affect post-workshop; H3. Participants will significantly increase self-rated progress towards their immediate personal goals;

Study context
The study was approved by the University of Salford's Research Ethics Panel (approval no. HSR1819-108). The workshop took place at a UK university's Creative Therapies Conference, where attendees can choose which sessions they want to register for. A 20-minute research presentation provided information about the A4B approach and wider project, but not any results around flow or the specific hypotheses of the present study, thus limiting bias while still enabling informed consent. Then, following a 15-minute break, the session was facilitated by a Chartered Psychologist and Dance Movement Psychotherapist, and a Counselling and Clinical Psychologist, assisted by three research assistants.

Design
A within-group repeated measures design tested for pre-post changes, with the dependent variables being mood (questionnaire scores for positive and negative affect) and personal goal attainment (participants' perceived progress in a self-selected goal for the workshop) and the independent variable being time (start of workshop versus end). A descriptive design was used to measure participants' flow experience during the activities, and perceived importance of flow, from questionnaire data gathered immediately post-workshop.

Participants
Conference attendees were comprised largely of counsellors and psychotherapists from both verbal and expressive/creative disciplines, students of counselling/psychotherapy, and other professionals or academics with an interest in these areas. Participant information sheets explained to attendees that they were free to leave or withdraw data and they signed consent forms in order to participate in the workshop. Table 2 displays participant's self-defined characteristics: Participants were at working age and the majority female (83%), white British (56%) and in psychological therapy professions (72%), with the remainder students or academics. All resided in North-West England, and as garnered through discussion, most had experience or interest in creativity as a therapeutic resource.

Materials
Mood was measured using the 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS), which has good reliability and validity (Watson et al., 1988) and asks participants to indicate to what extent they feel at present like a list of 10 positively valenced (e.g. 'Interested') and 10 negatively valenced (e.g. 'Distressed') words. Responses are on a 5-point Likert scale from one ('Very slightly or not at all') to five ('Extremely'). Scores ranging between 10 and 50 are calculated for each (positive and negative) subscale by totalling responses.
Participants' progress towards attaining a small personal goal was measured using a single-item numerical Goal Ladder (GL), devised by researchers as a key part of the A4B research (see Haslam et al., 2019;Karkou et al., 2022;Parsons et al., 2020Parsons et al., , 2021. The GL asks participants to set an immediate, personal goal for themselves (for example, 'To feel calmer') and rate the extent to which they feel that they have achieved this from one ('I am nowhere near achieving the goal or haven't started working towards it) to 10 ('I have already achieved this goal'). An acute measure of psychological flowthe nine-item Short Flow States Scale (SFSS; Jackson et al., 2008) was used to measure the degree to which participants were in flow state during the workshop. Example questions include 'I did things spontaneously and automatically without having to think', with responses given on a five-point Likert scale ranging from one ('Strongly disagree') to five ('Strongly agree'). SFSS demonstrates good validity and reliability (Jackson et al., 2008), with each of its nine items correlating very highly with the nine factors of its longer 36-item counterpart. A mean of all nine SFSS items is generated, with a range of one to five, with higher scores indicating a more 'flowlike' experience.
To assess perceived importance of flow, an Importance of Flow survey (IoF) was devised by the researchers, which asks participants to consider each of the nine statements of the SFSS in turn (e.g. 'I was completely focussed on the task at hand'; see Table 4), and rate how important each of these aspects were for the therapeutic aims of the workshop (changing mood and working towards a goal) on a five-point Likert scale from 1) Not important; irrelevant to 5) Extremely important; essential. A mean of all nine items was generated, with a possible range of one to five, with higher scores indicating flow dimensions considered more important for the creative therapeutic experience.

Procedure
After providing consent, participants completed the 20-item PANAS, before the 90-minute A4B workshop commenced. The A4B approach is described earlier and elsewhere (see Haslam et al., 2019;Karkou et al., 2022;Omylinska-Thurston et al., 2021;Parsons et al., 2020). Briefly, participants attend mindfully to their internal experience to determine a personally salient and immediate goal (written-out, then rated, on the GL), then use various artistic media (movement, image making, writing) to explore the goal, before discussing this experience in pairs and as a whole group and finally re-rating their goal attainment on the GL. After the workshop, participants repeated the PANAS measure again, completed the SFSS to rate how much flow they experienced in the workshop, and finally, rated the importance of each flow dimension on the IoF. Table 3 displays descriptive data for these measures immediately before and after the workshop:

Changes in affect and goal attainment
All PANAS data demonstrated acceptable (>.70) internal consistency. Median scores show an increase in Goal attainment and Positive affect, and a decrease in Negative affect. The Shapiro Wilk test revealed Post scores for both Positive and Negative affect were not normally distributed (p ¼ .026 and p ¼ .000, respectively). Therefore, with the GL data also being ordinal, Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were used to assess all pre-post differences.
Scores for Personal goal attainment post-workshop were significantly higher than scores at the start, N ¼ 18, Z ¼ 3.63, p < .001, r ¼ .86. Scores for Positive affect post-workshop were significantly higher than scores at the start, N ¼ 18, Z ¼ 1.94, p ¼ .026, r ¼ 0.46. Scores for Negative affect postworkshop were significantly lower than scores at the start, N ¼ 18, Z ¼ -2.33, p ¼ .010, r ¼ 0.55. Therefore, H1, H2 and H3 can be accepted, as participants' goal attainment and positive affect significantly increased, and negative affect significantly decreased.  Table 4:  The mean of overall flow scores was 3.96 (79% of the maximum possible score). Although no cut-off points are available for the SFSS, at face value this average score would seem to indicate that participants had a flow-like experience. The lowest scoring flow dimension was Unambiguous feedback, and the highest scoring was Autotelic experience. Agreement was highest for Concentration on the Task at Hand (SD ¼ .46) and lowest for Loss of self-consciousness (SD ¼ 1.28).

Therapeutic importance of flow
Participants rated the importance of flow dimensions for improving mood and working towards an immediate personal goal. Overall, out of a possible five points participants rated flow as at least somewhat important (M ¼ 3.48, SD ¼ 0.63). Table 5 displays participant's ratings of the nine individual flow dimensions, ranked from least important to most important: The only dimensions of flow rated below '3 -Somewhat important' were Unambiguous feedback and Transformation of time. The three dimensions of flow ranked by participants as the most important for the intervention's therapeutic aims were Automaticity, Concentration on the task at hand and Autotelic experience. Agreement on the importance of these three dimensions was also higher, displaying the three lowest standard deviations of the whole data set.

Discussion
This study aimed to measure psychological flow within a multimodal creative arts therapy (CAT) workshop (Arts for the Blues; A4B), to determine the perceived importance of flow, and to measure pre-post changes in mood and personal goal attainment. Quantitative results demonstrate significant positive changes in participants' personal goal attainment and mood, and that flow was indeed experienced during the workshop activities. These findings accord with Rogatko's (2009) study in which one hour of flow-promoting activities was associated with significantly improved mood (also measured using PANAS). As described earlier, key features of A4Bsuch as its enactive and embodied (Koch & Fischman, 2011) nature, nurturing of autonomy and agency, and client targetspromote both flow and these positive effects, which further supports research demonstrating improved psychological wellbeing affiliated with flowexperiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990;1997;Habe et al., 2021;Tse et al., 2021). Overall, it can be argued that A4B may offer acute improvements in mental state and enable flow, which may be an important experiential feature within enactive/embodied CAT approaches such as A4B. Survey responses also demonstrated that participants considered flow to be of some importance for the therapeutic aims of the workshop (mean scores 3.48 out of 5), and rated Autotelic experience, Concentration and Automaticity as the most important three dimensions, all scoring >3.79 on average. Although more recent research is limited, Jackson (1996) reported that elite athletes present these three, along with Sense of control, more than the other flow dimensions. Similarly, other studies report Concentration and Automaticity as key flow dimensions in the use of arts for wellbeing (Chemi, 2016;Taylor, 2016;Warren, 2006), while previous qualitative findings  highlight the importance of these dimensions along with Loss of self-consciousness, Challenge-skill balance, Clear goals and Unambiguous Feedback (the latter two experienced more by athletes than musicians; Habe et al., 2019) in enabling Autotelic experience to occur. Therefore, it seems that in creative, embodied and enactive therapy approaches, the most important flow dimensions may overlap with those previously reported by both artists and athletes.
In terms of actual flow experience, as measured by the SFSS, the top three dimensions occurring in the present study were Autotelic experience, Challenge-skill balance and Transformation of time. The "Structured yet flexible variety" offered by A4B (Parsons et al., 2020, p.7) means that the client can choose how, and with which arts modality, to work, thereby increasing the individual-activity fit, which may explain high Challenge-skill balance and Autotelic experience, and this enjoyment may cause time to pass quickly. Participants' Autotelic experience may also be explained by their autonomously choosing how to express artistically, yet it is also likely that in attending the conference, they were already interested in therapeutic arts, therefore results may be less applicable to wider populations. Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi (2014) stated that, to capture one's attention and enter flow state, activities must provide a sense of competence, explicit goals, and some form of unambiguous feedback. In selfdetermination theory, having a sense of competence can increase intrinsic motivation towards a goal (Deci & Ryan, 2012). Additionally, flow-proneness is related to certain psychological features involving confidence and motivation (Ull en et al., 2012), and these seemingly overlap with feelings of competence and goal-directedness. Separating out these correlates from the relevant flow dimensions was not part of the present study. As mentioned previously, Unambiguous feedback has been qualitatively reported by participants (survivors of cultic abuse) in a previous study as desirable during A4B . However, in the present study, having ' … a good idea about how well I was doing while I was involved in the task/activity' was rated lowest of all flow dimensions both in participants' experiencing, and rated importance of it. Again, no comparison was made between different participant samples, limiting generalisability of findings. Doyle (2017) states that Sense of control and Unambiguous feedback are not typically experienced by fine artists compared to more performative domains, and indeed these were rated by our participants as the lowest and third lowest dimensions in both their experiencing and perceived importance. Perhaps, at least in conscious awareness, the focus and aims of CATs are less on 'feeling in control' and 'doing well', than in more competitive performance domains of flow (e.g. sports, musical performance), where the common aim is performing well for an audience. However, Sense of control echoes previously reported experiences of DMP clients' empowerment -'I could decide what I was going to do with my body … it felt really good to be in control because everything else in my life, I've got no control over.' (Parsons & Dubrow-Marshall, 2019, p.4). Similarly, a key tenet of A4B is "Nurturing autonomy and agency" (Parsons et al., 2020, p.7), which may include control over how and how much to engage. In the present study, participants low ratings for Sense of control and Unambiguous feedback may relate more to releasing notions of control, expectation or approval and defying external loci of self-evaluation (Cooper et al., 2012), which have previously been reported to impede DMP clients' engagement . The present participants' capacity to release control over performance again reinforces the validity of the design of the A4B intervention which provides autonomy and choice in the type and manner of creative expression, without judging artistic skill/output.
Flow states are often associated with instinctive action and hypofrontality, lowering the prefrontal cortex activity associated with controlled cognitive processes, heightening automatic/implicit activity of other brain regions such as associative mind wandering and semantic processing (Doyle, 2017).
Automaticity would seem to be most relevant here, and its importance was rated as M ¼ 3.79 (out of 5) in the present study. However, Rogatko (2009) demonstrated that increases in overall flow score, as measured by the SFSS, were significantly related to acutely increased positive, and decreased negative, affect (measured by the PANAS) when engaging in high-flow activities and that all flow dimensions except Automaticity contributed significantly to increasing positive affect. Silverman et al. (2016) demonstrated that flow predicted therapeutic outcomes (hope, and readiness to change) in a single music therapy songwriting session. However, unlike Rogatko (N ¼ 57) and Silverman et al. (N ¼ 224), our small sample size (N ¼ 18) is less likely to be representative of the wider/clinical population, and no correlations are presented. Furthermore, in the present study, participants' high ratings for the importance of Automaticity may result from the embodied, imaginative and enactive properties of A4B, via which participants are encouraged to pay attention to their physical senses, imagination and instinctive physical actions. The same cannot be said for Rogatko's and Silverman et al.'s participants, who underwent selfselected and songwriting activities, respectively.
Methodological limitations of the present study include a lack of control group; therefore, it is not possible to make comparisons between pre-post outcomes of our intervention and an alternative 90-minute activity (for example, mindfulness, or sitting quietly). Secondly, we have not examined any chronology of flow experiences and mood changes, which may be of relevanceflow may lead to improved mood, but equally, certain moods may predispose one to a flow state. In addition, individual dimensions of mood were not analysed by the present study, and future studies could investigate specific affective states in relation to flow and CATs. Lastly, this was a one-off exploratory study using a comparatively small sample, the majority of whom were female, white British and in psychological professions. Although the experience of flow is analogous regardless of socioeconomic status, age, culture and ethnicity (Ull en et al., 2012), our sample is non-clinical and heavily skewed towards a majority demographic in the field of Western psychology, who were also likely to have more familiarity and comfort with engaging with both psychotherapeutic and artistic practices, therefore generalisability to wider/clinical populations is diminished.
Future research should trial multimodal approaches such as A4B with the inclusion of a control group, larger, more diverse, and clinical samples, and a longer intervention facilitated over multiple sessions. Flow should be measured using the longer Flow States Scale, which includes multiple items for each subscale, allowing more reliable analysis of flow dimensions. Research should also test whether flow and its dimensions are associated with therapeutic changes in CATs, as research on this is limited and entirely missing in embodied/enactive CATs such as A4B (or indeed, DMP).
Psychological practitioners should be aware that A4B has the potential to significantly improve affect and increase personal goal attainment in a short, acute intervention, making this a potentially cost-effective group intervention. Also, although clients can enter a flow state and perceive this to be at least somewhat important, the concept of flow as a therapeutic feature may overlap with features of self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2012) and is not well understood. Given the extant research base for the positive impact of flow for overall wellbeing, and participants' views of flow as relevant to therapeutic outcomes, researchers could consider further developing CATs which aim to increase flow acutely and in day-to-day experience over time.

Conclusions
To conclude, an Arts for the Blues workshopan embodied, enactive and multimodal CAT approachenabled flow in a group of 18 participants, who also experienced significant positive changes in personal goal attainment and mood. These participants also rated flow as at least somewhat important within A4B's creative therapeutic activities, with some dimensions (Concentration, and Autotelic experience) rated as highly important. The therapeutic value of inducing flow states in psychotherapeutic interventions has not been well studied and future research in this area could improve both theory and practice. Flow should be explored more fully, to understand its potential impact in embodied/enactive CATs and mental health in general.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported in part by the University of Salford's Early Career Researcher grant, Salford, UK.

Notes on contributors
Ailsa Parsons is a lecturer (fHEA), Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) and creative psychotherapist (core accreditation: Dance Movement Psychotherapy; RDMP; UKAHPP). Her research spans pluralistic and multimodal approaches, Dance Movement Psychotherapy and psychological flow. Clinically, Ailsa works in private practice and with organisations to provide tailored therapeutic support, integrating verbal, creative and embodied ways of working.
Linda Dubrow-Marshall is a clinical and counselling psychologist (HCPC Registered) and a BACP Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist. Linda is also a senior lecturer at the University of Salford where she co-leads the MSc Applied Psychology (Therapies) and MSc Psychology of Coercive Control programmes. She has a private practice and is co-founder of the Re-entry Therapy, Information and Referral Network (RETIRN) that provides specialist services to individuals and families who have been affected by coercive control in relationships and in cultic and abusive groups. She has specialist certifications in Addictions, Clinical hypnosis, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Richard Turner is a counsellor (MBACP reg.) with an MSc in Psychology of Coercive Control from the University of Salford, who supports clients recovering from intense experiences of coercive control in cults and relationships, through his private counselling practice (www.tothinkagain.co.uk). He also delivers training about cult psychology and offers advice and guidance for families impacted by cult groups. Alongside this, he teaches counselling at York College, delivers talks and writes articles about his personal experience in a cult and his autism.
Scott Thurston, Professor of Poetry and Innovative Creative Practice at the University of Salford. Scott Thurston is a poet, dancer and trainee therapist. With regards to Dancing the Blues, he is one of the four co-researchers and part of the steering group for the project. Scott is a widely-published poet and critic and a founding editor of the open access Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. Since 2004, he has been developing a performance practice integrating dance and poetry which has seen him studying with dancers in Berlin, New York and collaborating with dancers Sarie Mairs Slee, Julia Griffin and Gemma Collard-Stokes in the UK.
Jennifer Starkey (23rd May 1980 -14th June 2022, in Memoriam). Jen was a research assistant at the Research Centre for Arts and Wellbeing, Edge Hill University, having been involved in several research projects over several years including the Arts for the Blues project. Jen came from an events management background and worked with vulnerable groups in the community before joining Edge Hill University and the Arts for the Blues team. She was instrumental in the development of the interactive website for the project for the University of Salford and supported the digital delivery of workshops for the public, training programmes for therapists, and therapy sessions for clients. Jen was invaluable as a research assistant within this study, organising logistics, collecting data, and as always embodying warmth, camaraderie, and a safe pair of hands. The Arts for the Blues team wishes to acknowledge Jen's pivotal contribution as a much-missed member of our community.
Joanna Omylinska-Thurston, Counselling Psychologist, Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation NHS Trust & Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy, University of Salford Joanna is an experienced Counselling Psychologist who has been practicing within NHS for over 20 years providing psychological therapy and supervision. She is a co-founder of Arts for the Blues project which is currently being tested in the NHS and other services in the NW of the UK.
Vicky Karkou, Chair of Dance, Arts and Wellbeing at Edge Hill University Professor Vicky Karkou, MD (Honoris Causa), PhD, MEd, PgDip (DMT), RDMP, BEdSc (Honors) is internationally known academic and researcher in the arts and arts therapies and co-founder of Dancing the Blues (more recently renamed: Arts for the Blues). Originally a dance movement psychotherapist, she is currently directing the Research Centre for Arts and Wellbeing at Edge Hill University that deals with research projects in the arts, arts in health and arts psychotherapies. She is currently based at the Faculty of Applied Health, Social Care and Medicine and has received external funding from a range of different funding bodies including NIHR, the Clinical Commissioning Group, AHRC, ESRC, the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust and the European Union. She is widely published in peer reviewed journals and edited books and is one of the co-editors of Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy.