Date & Time: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025 at 7 pm
Speaker: Trish Bedford. MA,PGD, Art Psychotherapist Licensed in UK and Qatar Clinical Supervisor, Researcher, Consultant, Author, Artist, Educator at Flourishing Minds Clinic Country Director at Qatar National Arts and Health Week-Global Arts and Health Week Qatar. Director at Therapeutic Art Global Ltd
Venue: Doha English Speaking School
Location Map: DESS
Synopsis:
Qatar’s desert, parks and coastline are changing at speed, and people’s inner worlds are shifting with them. This talk gives citizens and residents a direct experience of nature-based Art Therapy, led by a Masters-trained art therapist. Using simple natural materials from desert and sea, participants will explore questions of home, identity and belonging in a rapidly changing Qatar, and notice how their sensory experience and images reflect their own stories.
Drawing on nature-based art therapy and arts-and-health research, the session will show how creating with natural materials can regulate the nervous system, support emotional regulation and attention, and also stimulate creativity, curiosity and critical thinking. Working with image, symbol and metaphor helps people organise experience, make meaning and develop richer personal and cultural narratives. Shared making in a group reduces loneliness and strengthens social connection without forcing people to talk before they are ready. Participants will leave with a small personal artwork and a clearer sense of how cultural spaces, communities, schools and museums in Qatar can intentionally use art and nature together to support community wellbeing. The session will also highlight why the specialist training of Masters-level art therapists matters when working with emotional material, and how institutions
can partner safely and effectively with registered art therapists in public and educational programmes.
Speaker Bio
Trish Bedford is an Art Psychotherapist, Consultant, Clinical Supervisor, Educator, Researcher, Author, Artist and Public Speaker with over 20 years of experience across the UK, Qatar, East Africa and the Gulf. Ethiopian born and raised in Zambia, Wales and England, with Ugandan and English heritage, she served as the first Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Associate Editor for the International Journal of Art Therapy and has coordinated multiple BAAT Special Interest Groups.
She is known for pioneering expressive arts therapy in Qatar, establishing the country’s first Expressive Arts Therapy service at Naufar and independently leading Qatar’s first therapeutic museum and gallery visits within clinical practice. Trish works clinically with Flourishing Minds Clinic and Mend Collective, founded Therapeutic Art in 2013. Her experience spans addictions, autism and behavioural work, refugee and youth services, trauma-informed practice, attachment-focused parent–child research with HBKU, and arts-and-health studies with Weill Cornell and Sidra Medicine. She is published, lectures widely, and presents and moderatesinternationally.
Trish has collaborated with Qatar Cancer Society and Qatar Red Crescent, serves as Director of Qatar National Arts and Health Week and Country Director for Global South Arts and Health Week–Qatar, which in 2024 welcomed representatives from 12 countries for an eight-day research/experiential programme. She is also Co-Chair of Gulf Good Vibes’ Buddy wellbeing programme and recipient of the Women’s Leaders Excellence Award for her contributions to art therapy and community mental health. culturally rooted art therapy and community wellness projects, including early recognition of PTSD in volunteers during the 2015 refugee crisis. She has presented at international conferences and continues to develop programmes that connect art and mental health across clinical, educational, cultural and public settings. Trish works across video, installation and textile art, exploring identity, belonging, nostalgia and social justice.
