Jamie Bird

Jamie is an art therapist and arts-based researcher from the UK. He is currently based within the University of Derby. His PhD research involved working with women who had experienced domestic violence, using visual media to explore what home, relationships and support meant for them in the past, the present and the future. This built upon previous and similar work with refugees and asylum seekers. At present, Jamie is developing and implementing social action and arts-based research methods in response to the climate and environmental crisis, with particular attention to how communities can work together and adapt to the consequences of a changing climate and environment. This crosses over with therapeutic work conducted alongside nature-based practitioners, offering schools a way to work differently with children's social and emotional well-being.

Kim Valldejuli

Kim is a board-certified registered art therapist, and PhD candidate in Drexel University’s PhD in Creative Arts Therapies programme. She is a research fellow in Dr Girija Kaimal’s Health, Arts, Learning and Evaluation Lab at Drexel University. Kim is a director of the Art Therapy Association of Trinidad and Tobago, and an associate editor for the International Journal of Art Therapy. Her research explores traditional healing practices in the Caribbean diaspora and implications for art therapy practice and pedagogy.

Heleina Waimoana Dalton

Heleina is a registered Clinical Creative Arts Therapist and Bicultural Clinical Supervisor (Kaitiakitanga), with over 25 years of experience in the community education space. Her journey into therapeutic practice began through decades of community-based work, including roles as a certified parent educator for both Poutiria te Aroha and Parenting with Nonviolence. She later formalised her clinical practice by completing postgraduate and master’s training in arts therapy, becoming a clinical therapist in 2021. Her practice is person-centred and integrates kaupapa Māori, experiential psychotherapeutic modalities, wairuatanga (spirituality), creativity, and te taiao (the natural world). She offers services to children (all genders), youth, and adult women, and is based in both Auckland City and Whangārei. Heleina works confidently with people from all cultural backgrounds and speaks both English and Te Reo Māori.

Glossary

Te Reo Māori words that Heleina mentions:

• Karikia – invocation, incantation, prayer

• Whakapapa – ancestry

• Tangata whenua – people of the land

• Te Tai Tokerau – Northland region of Aotearoa

• Iwi – tribe

• Tupuna – ancestor/grandparent

• Mokopuna – grandchildren

• Te Ao Māori – Māori worldview

• Toi – art/arts

• Whati – disruption

• Ngā taki o te whenua – leading iwi of the land

• Mana whenua – territorial rights, power from the land, authority over land or territory, jurisdiction over land or territory

• Mana motuhake – separate identity, autonomy, self-government, self-determination, independence, sovereignty

• Rangatiratanga – chieftainship, right to exercise authority, chiefly autonomy, chiefly authority, leadership

• Te Whakaminenga – Confederation of Chiefs/United Tribes, formed to discuss concerns, frame policy and responsible for the Declaration of [Sovereignty] Independence, 1835

• Te Whakaputanga – Declaration of Independence

• Waiata – song

• Te Toi o Ngā Rangi – the highest heaven in Māori cosmology

• Iho matua – spiritual umbilical cord*

• Wairua – spirit

• Toanga – treasure, both tangible and intangible items

For more about Iho Matua, please refer to the work of Dame Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira – Māori language proponent, educator, intellectual, artist and writer.

Kim Valldejuli, black blood in me veins, 2025, mixed media, 330 × 405mm. 
This artwork is from the research Jamie and Kim are currently conducting, and is a reference to the Caribbean carnival character, Jab Jab.